Good afternoon!
It is an honor to be speaking here in front of honorable women and men - dedicated and committed to search for truth, justice and reparation. But given the global context wherein conflict is still happening all over the world for different reasons and gravity, this quest is elusive. Our presence here in this gathering, however, could lead to the realization of more hopes. Hopes leading to hope for reconciliation and peace.
Realizing the importance of this meeting, I traveled 44 hours via Germany, thanks to the requirement imposed by the USA for everyone to have a transient visa when getting a connecting flight in their territory to get here. I want this meeting to be remembered by everyone as a great meeting of honorable people searching for truth, justice and reparation for the missing persons. Thus, I would like to contribute my unsolicited opinion that may facilitate the outcome of this plenary. I hope it will.
Thanks to jetlag which caused me sleepless nights; it kept me thinking about a lot of things, including how to facilitate the accomplishment of the objectives of this meeting.
I can’t keep my mind off the global conflict happening around us; global conflicts that affect our countries, our communities, our associations and families. These conflicts may be ideological and/or political, economic, religious, ethnic, “clan-ish” or other else. These conflicts, usually violent, result in various forms of human rights violations like massacre, extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, displacements and sometimes missing persons who in most cases were tortured, raped, summarily executed and buried in clandestine cemeteries or remote and secluded places so as not to be found. At worst, sometimes these victims were even burned to make recovery and identification of the bodies difficult, much less the determination of the cause and the manner of their deaths. In these conflicts, the people involved are either state actors, those who work for the state, or non-state actors, those who work for their own causes or reasons. But, whichever group did the violations, the fact remains that there are missing persons who need to look for and there are relatives, and maybe communities, who we have to assist and accompany in their quest for truth. The truth that may or should lead to justice and reparation.
After three days of productive debates [though sometimes heated and confusing], at the end of the day, we delivered outputs. We formulated MINIMUM International standards and recommendations that will FACILITATE, NOT OBSTRUCT the quest for truth, justice and reparation.
Thus, in the drafting of the MINIMUM International Standards and recommendations, I think we should be guided by the realities and reasons why we are all gathered here. There is the reality of conflicts in various levels producing missing persons. Because of these missing persons or group of persons, we are here to produce MINIMUM international standards that will, again, FACILITATE, NOT obstruct the quest for truth by the affected persons, groups or communities. These standards and recommendations should particularly FACILITATE:
1. The healing process of the affected person(s) and their communities;
2. The search for the missing and the processes necessary such as data gathering, exhumation, analysis of the recovered remains, personal effects and artifacts, identification and determination of the cause and manner of death;
3. The search for truth, justice and reparation, and
4. The quest for the end to the phenomenon of missing persons.
We are now at the highpoint of this meeting. I therefore hope that the outcome of this meeting will lead us to old and new directions, but nevertheless, all leading to the achievement of our most proximal objective, that is the TRUTH.
I hope this could help us in coming into an agreement on the passionately debated and arduously and meticulously crafted International MINIMUM Standards and recommendations that will be presented. I hope there will be no debate on what I presented because this is just a suggestion. You may take it or leave it.
ˇMuchas gracias!
Dr. Benito
Molino, M.D.(photo on top) is a peace, health and human rights advocate whose passion is to defend the rights of the oppressed and the exploited through documentation of cases of human rights violations; working for the enhancement of forensic capability in the Philippines; building of sustainable community health programs for the poor and advocating for affordable and effective public health services. He finds happiness in working for the poor and in seeing them able to build their
lives.
