Press Briefing: Karla Quintana, Head of the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic.

Thank you.
All right.
Good afternoon.
We're delighted to be joined by Carla Quintana, who, as you know, is the head of the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria.
Carla, welcome, and I will let you make some opening comments, and we'll take some questions.
Yes.
Right.
Our colleagues will do that for you.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Thank you.
Good morning, good evening, everyone.
We have had two very intense days talking about Syria, talking to the Syrian mission, talking to member states in the area formula, as you saw, talking about transitional justice in Syria.
Yesterday, I was able to brief the General Assembly on the progress we have done the last year.
In Syria, the report of the Secretary-General is also out for you to analyze.
So 19 months ago, Syria entered a new chapter in history.
The historic morning of December 8th, 2024, opened a new path towards hope after more than five decades of torture and detention and disappearances.
Hope, however, has accompanied many challenges confronting the country.
They have to rebuild the cities, and few of the challenges are as profound as to look for the hundreds of thousands of missing persons in Syria.
We have to remember that Syria has one of the highest numbers of missing persons in the world.
Both in absolute terms and relative to its population.
I think this is very important to take into consideration when we are analyzing our work in Syria and the challenges ahead.
Every Syrian has a missing and every family in Syria knows someone that is missing.
Addressing the issue of the missing persons is not only a humanitarian imperative and unethical one, but also it is fundamental for stabilization and for peace building.
Thanks to the perseverance of the families of the missing of civil society and of course, of member states in the General Assembly, the independent institution of missing persons were created.
We have been working closely and CDA knows that they don't have to do this alone.
The institution exists because of the families, it works for the families and it implements the mandate with the Sorry.
Over the past year, we have been implementing our mandate.
We have already been delivering news and information to families.
We are building system that are enabling us and analyzing information that are enabling us to give every time more information to families in Syria and abroad.
We have been working also on not only in Syria, but in other countries with the diaspora.
In Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Germany.
We have processed more than 75,000 documents.
This is nine times more than last year, and as previously mentioned, this has allowed us to give families some answers and to strengthen our lines of inquiry.
We have been working as stated in the report of the Secretary-General, we have been working and focusing on the forced disappearances of the previous regime of missing migrants, on on missing children in security deposits, and other disappearances by other armed groups such as Daesh and others, and also other disappearances after the fall of their regime.
Firmly believing that information sharing is both essential to the search and one of the biggest challenges we have offered access to our system and information to international actors and to the national authorities.
If we succeed in building these systems together, sharing information, accessing to information, we're not only going to be able to give more answers to families, but we are going to set an example worldwide in looking for the missing.
This is the biggest challenge when looking for the missing, accessing, analyzing, and and sharing information.
The search for the missing is a collective process.
No one can do this alone, not at a national, not at an international level.
And it requires from all of us to work in collaboration, in coordination, and in complementarity.
There are no shortcuts.
Isolated efforts are not enough even if they are well intentioned.
Sustained cooperation, coordination, technical support, and openness to international expertise remain essential.
Hundreds of thousands of families are still waiting for concrete answers.
We also saw how thrilled everyone was that 8th of December of 2024, how Syrians were thrilled for the fall of their regime, but we also that there were many families, many mothers, many women that were not because their loved ones never came back.
Those people are still waiting for answers and those people are still missing.
So the answers that they're waiting can only be billed with information flow, again, Scientific methodologies directed to finding the missing, political will at all levels and trust, and we know this from comparative experience.
Finally, a final thought for the women that are looking for their loved ones all over the world and especially in Syria and that they have never abandoned hope to them, who had made that impossible possible, I offer my deepest recognition, respect and admiration.
Thank you.
Miss Quintana, thank you, Id.
Thank you very much on behalf of the United Nations Correspondent Association for doing this briefing.
My name is Edith Lettera from the Associated Press.
Is there any possibility that any of these hundreds of thousands of missing people might still be alive somewhere and What is your best assessment of what's happened to them? Have they been killed and put in mass graves? I assume that the country has been scoured from top to bottom for any prisons that might not have been found.
Thank you.
Please.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you for the question and we have to be very cautious and I have to be very serious about how what I say about hoist can be alive or not.
We want to find them alive.
That's the first principle of looking of the search from the United Nations.
Having said that, We are working in several lines of inquiry, as I mentioned, one of them being the missing children in security deposits.
We have been analyzing lots of information and we have gotten to the conclusion that to this moment, we have the names of around a little bit more than 600 cases.
Some of them, we know for sure they are alive and some of them have already gotten back to their families.
So there's a possibility of persons being alive.
Yes, we have to be very cautious of how we manage the expectations with the families of the missing.
When we talk about the concept of the missing, this is very broad.
We're not only talking about for disappearances and the modus operandi where we know that many of the persons that were in prisons are deaf.
No it's just the information we have now, but we cannot affirm that 100%.
And we also know that there might be some trafficking, so that's a possibility as well.
We cannot, again, raise expectations until we have information.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My name is bam Azim Aravil had newspaper.
Just a quick follow up you talked about trafficking.
If you could elaborate on that.
Then how do you think other issues, including, for example, displacement in Syria is affecting your work? Thank you.
I'll start with displacement.
I'm going back to what the concept of the missing is.
For us, the concept of missing is very broad and it only requires a family not knowing where their loved one is.
What happened to that person can be very diverse.
It can be a for disappearance, it can be someone that is displaced and we don't know, someone that got lost in the missing migrant route, so on and so forth.
So yes, displacement always is taken into consideration and is a possibility and a line of investigation for us when looking for missing people.
We have received cases of people that have been displaced and that's the allegation that last time we saw this person, what it was before they were displaced.
So we are following up.
We are working closely with you and ATR as well.
And other UN entities and other CSOs in order to be able to track and to get more information to find them, and that's another possibility of finding people, of course, alive.
We're working on that.
About trafficking, again, going back to the concept of the missing, trafficking is another possibility.
We are still working on that inquiry when people are disappeared by other groups or even within the displacement by that might have been victims of trafficking.
I am not able to give more detail because we're working still on that line of inquiry.
Just a quick follow up.
Do you have an idea about numbers or percentages? I would not be able to give were working on that.
No San This is Nam Abdulla Rudo.
Thank you so much for this important briefing.
I have a couple of questions.
One on Afrin and Srikana, those two predominantly Kurdish areas.
I think you've said in the past your mandate covers everyone regardless of ethnicity.
I just wonder, I mean, thousands of Kurds went missing when Islamist rebels took over those cities, and Afrin and Srikani.
Those rebels are now integrated into the new Syrian army.
Have you been able to open a line of inquiry into this and has damasks given you access to records and detention sites that belong to these rebel groups? That's the first question.
We look for everyone regardless of their ethnicity, when they went missing, including, of course, after December 8th, and the reason why they went missing.
We have been in contact with their families.
We have been in contact with organizations on the ground, and so far we have not been on the field in the North, but we are in contact with them.
Okay.
Nearly 3,000 Yazidi women were abducted from Sinj in Iraq and most of them are believed to have been taken to Syria by the Islamic State terror group.
What do we know about them? How many of them have you been able to locate or is there anything you can share with us today? One of the license in query, as I said, as I mentioned, is the person that had been disappeared by other groups, including, of course, Daesh.
We're working closely especially with CSOs with civil society that are in contact with the families of some of these women.
I personally talked to one of the families and we are also having some conversations starting these conversations also with Iraq.
Thank you.
Namo De Nfm.
No.
I'm sorry.
I popped my bed.
Yes.
No enough.
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
My name is Sennar from D market.
I have a few questions that I want to ask.
Yes.
I have a few questions, but I will start with two.
If there is time, I will ask more.
First, I know this report is both pre and post Asad work.
I wonder if you have any assessment, can you assess how it looks like after post Asad when it comes to the missing people in Syria? And then that brings me to the second question, how is the cooperation with the Syrian transitional government when it comes to the research and working on missing people? Thank you.
Yes.
Regarding your first question about how does it look first, for us at the independent institution, we don't make a difference.
We look for everyone regardless of when they were missing.
The lines of inquiry are very different.
The modus operandi of what we're analyzing, the four lines of inquiry that I mentioned first are different from the last one after the fall of the regime.
And we are in close cooperation, talking to the government not only in the previous disappearances, but also in the new ones, especially with the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
And we understand that who is taking care of the new disappearances internally is the Minister of Interior.
And the Minister of Justice, we at the independent institution work very closely or have a close dialogue with the Missing Persons Commission.
We are working with them since May 2025.
We are building trust.
We are working on specific projects.
Of course, it is a work in progress.
We have to build the processes, we have to build the methodologies, we have to build trust, and we are working on that.
There are many difficult questions to be answered yet, not only in the missing person file, but in the Transitional justice file, as you heard a couple of days ago, we know that this Answering this question takes years.
We are here to support the National Commission and the Syrian state and the Syrian families in order to do that.
But again, this is a work in progress and we are building this relationship for the sake of the missing.
Thank you.
Welcome back to you, Ephraim.
Thank you so much.
It's Ephraim Kosahi with Arab News Daily.
We saw you last year.
You were just beginning your mission.
Now it's one year later.
How much time have you spent in Syria? What are some of the revelations that your work have shown you during this year? You talked last year also about your experience finding the disappeared in Mexico.
How is that experience also informing your work right now? And if I may, quick follow ups, very short ones.
Edi Schy assumed that the country has been scoured from top to bottom, for mass graves, for prisons, has that really been done, do you think? And do you feel that the government I know the Volker Türk said and mentioned rightly that the amount of challenges in Syria is so overwhelming and, you know, there's so much to do.
But do you feel that the government is giving this particular issue the attention it needs, given the way you explain it, how detrimental it is to people? Yes.
Thank you.
Um, We are in the field on a consistent basis.
I think it's important to underscore that we have been granted access by this government and that was not the case before.
Having said that, we still have not been granted to have an office and constant presence in Syria and that's something that we have been asking and we asked the General Assembly also for their support yesterday.
So hopefully we can have an office in Syria which will enable us to better implement our mandate, build trust with families, with Syrian authorities, and to in the end, be able to give more answers to families.
Second, how do I see the country? Cities are destroyed, families are torn apart.
Syrians are rebuilding, as we all know, their government, their social fabric.
They have many challenges ahead.
Yes, there are hundreds, at least the IMP, we have been able to document hundreds of mass graves.
We have offered this analysis to the National Commission on Missing Persons.
We have, I mean, I personally have been there and I and my team have heard every day everywhere, and I am not lying about this.
Every time we listen, everyone knows someone that is missing.
Whether you go on a restaurant, if you're in a taxi, you're walking on the street, wherever you are, everyone talks about the missing and we still do not know the scope of this tragedy because we don't still have an official number and we are working on that.
Um, how does it compare to other countries Mexico or others? The scope of the issue is one of the biggest one.
As I mentioned, we're talking about, that's the official figures 130-300 thousand missing.
It's one of the biggest ones.
Yes, in terms of the scope, we can bring experiences from countries in Latin America.
Um, we have that experience in the WIMP in order to help hands on the Syrian authorities.
We also have experts from the region.
In terms of the modus operandi of the kind of disappearances, of course, it's a mix of everything.
When you look into the forced disappearances from the Asad regime, you get closer to the experiences Latin America had in the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s, and then you also have missing children as other countries like Argentina, then you have uh, disappearances by other state actors as we have in other countries like my own.
And so I mean, it's unique.
We cannot compare it to one country in a specific, but it brings different, um, realities that we can see in other countries and in many, many years, many years ago regarding mass graves and prisons.
What the national authorities have said regarding masking mass grave is that they are not going to open mass graves until, I mean, I have heard 2027 or 2028, are planning, they are working on how to get there.
We have seen that there has been some opening of mass graves.
We still don't know about the identification of that specific process, but what we can say from the independent institution is that it would be important to implement processes that we know have worked on other latitudes to be able to identify persons at this scale.
It's not easy.
Finally, prisons Yes, there has been lots of work done in prisons, especially, you know, they are experts in doing this.
ICRC has been working closely and working on prisons.
Very quickly, is it easy for people to get in touch with you, the families of the disappeared, and why the government has not allowed an office to be established? We are reaching the families is not easy in general.
I mean, we are reaching families outside Syria.
We are trying to reach families inside Syria, and this is not only true for us, but also for the National Commission, for the national authorities we have to be on the field, and we have to explain to families what we do, what we can do to not raise expectations of what we can and cannot do.
But it would make We could do better in reaching out to them if we had enough there.
Again, the reason that Syrian government has given us for not granting an yet is that they are analyzing the requests from all the UN entities that are asking for the same.
Hopefully, now with the visit of Secretary-General in a couple of days, we can receive some good news for us and for the missing and the Syrian families.
Thank you, Zina.
Thank you so much.
I'm Zina working for AP 360 and IMF and the Homeland News.
My question is a little critical, but I want you to answer me with what you can do.
Why is it the task for the UN staff to do this job, not for this furious regime or a transitional regime who became furious about Assad.
The second question, it leads to the same because the United Nations when they were disappearing or they went missing under the process of being missing by this authoritarian regime or what, they have the tools, the international laws, and the leaders of the world who are powerful and they can take the right decision to do not let them disappear.
They were disabled to take any decision, and now we can see the same.
It's going around the world in different places, people they are tortured, they are killed, they are going missing and nobody can take any decision in the United Nations.
I mean, why? Because they want to keep routes to be in touch with this regime.
They're not letting you in and they can mention some names, but I will not mention because it's globally.
Yes, I I would like to go back to why do we exist as an independent institution on missing persons.
We are a unique institutions here at the UN because the families were the ones who asked for our creation.
The families of the missing in Syria needed an institution.
I need an institution to work on this because they thought back then, this was three years ago, no one was giving them answers to looking for their loved ones.
I cannot give you an answer of why this didn't happen before.
What I can tell you is that it happened when the families of the missing push for this institution to exist and our mandate, again, is to look for everyone from the past and from the present and going back to what we can do, we would be pushing for having a presence there, but I want to be very clear with you, we do not limit our work on that.
Of course, that would make our job easier and closer to the families, but we are working In the diaspora, we are working on giving families two answers on a consistent basis and we will continue to do so.
We work for Syrians regardless of the government that is there.
So you didn't protect the families before to ask this question or to ask you to defend or protect their siblings or relatives or something and you let their regime to do the task.
But why now it's your task and task? Why not for the transitional regime? What tools the United Nations have they don't have there.
I think they came furious and they want to take revenge of what happened before and create human rights.
Why it's not there? Again, I can answer on behalf of the IMP.
The IMP has been looking for the families since it was created and it was created in three years ago and its mandate covers the current disappearances, the past disappearances.
Thank you.
Any questions online? Otherwise, we'll go back to Sinan Abdul Hamid Abdul Hamid, then Sinan, and then we'll close.
Okay.
Thank you so much, Quintana.
This is Abdel Hamid Sayan from the Arabic Dairse Arabi.
I recall last year's press conference and I asked you a question and I want to follow up with that the same question I asked you last year.
I asked you about the missing Palestinians in Syria.
If you put any effort to reach out to the Palestinian community, Palestinian NGOs in Syria, did you visit Yarmouk refugee camp, which is the largest refugee camp, and it was completely destroyed and thousands of Palestinians were missing.
What can you update me to your answer last year, which you didn't give me much information last year? Thank you.
Yes, we are in contact with several organization of Palestinians.
We have in our advisory board representation also for that community, although they do it on their individual capacity.
We are working and we are meeting with these CSOs and with families with Palestinian families, and we have been in the ground.
As I mentioned earlier, we have not been able to leave the mascs on the field, so we are hoping that we can do so in the future, but we are in contact with them.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Last question to Sinan.
Thank you, Stephan.
Thank you very much again.
I have a question specifically about missing children.
As you know, like, a lot of children been missing since the Daesh attack, Sinjar, the Yazidi town.
And according to my sources, some kids have been adopted in different countries by different families.
And I wonder, have you institution found any of those kids, and if you can tell me more information, where do you find them most? Which countries are those? And if you can give me maybe one or two examples will be really helpful.
Thank you very much.
Yes.
I Although we work in these five lines of inquiry I mentioned before, that ones that we are focusing on contextual we do it in a contextual basis, we are receiving information of other kinds of disappearances.
We have heard about this and we are following up.
I cannot give you specific information.
We have not yet gotten to have enough information to be able to present it to you.
But yes, we know about it, and what we're focusing now regarding the missing children file is the security deposits during the Assad regime.
That's how we have been focusing at, but we are not limited to that.
Once we get more information about other modus operandi on missing children, we would be able to give you more detail.
Great.
Miss Quintana, thank you so much for being here.
We hope to see you back.
Thank you.
And thank you and have a good day.
Thank you.