Missing Migrants and the Right to Identification

Building on the body of literature that calls for a human-rights-based approach to the tragic phenomenon of the loss of identities of migrants who go missing on their journeys, this article aims to provide a legal conceptualization of the ‘right to identification’ that may serve as the backbone of a normative framework defining state obligations regarding the missing in this context. It takes as a prompt the statement that ‘human beings have the right not to lose their identities after death’ in the preamble to Interpol Resolution No. AGN/65/RES/13 concerning disaster victim identification, and examines the rights to dignity and identity, including how they operate and interact with each other and with the right to truth. Recognizing that both the missing themselves and their loved ones may be regarded as victims of involuntary disappearance, a central argument here is that dignity is the right of the dead as well as the living, that dignity serves to protect identity as an integral aspect of personhood, and that the right to identification is exercisable by next of kin via the right to truth. The article’s final section outlines the state obligations incorporating identification, as derived from human rights and humanitarian law. The author hopes that this inquiry into the right to identification can spur further action on the part of states to fulfil their humanitarian duties.