20 December 2024
Photo: Yasmen Almashan of the Caesar Families Association, part of the Truth and Justice Charter Syria. Credit – Paul Wagner for the Syria Campaign.
Impunity Watch welcomes the appointment of Ms. Karla Quintana as the Head of the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic (IIMP). The appointment was announced by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a press conference on 19 December 2024.
The IIMP was established by the United Nations General Assembly in June 2023 to clarify the fate and whereabouts of all missing persons in Syria and to provide adequate support to victims, survivors and the families of those missing, in close cooperation and complementarity with all relevant actors.
New head of the IIMP: Background of her work
Ms. Quintana is a human rights expert and legal scholar who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this new and challenging role, in which she will be dealing with one of Syria’s most painful chapters. Prior to this appointment, she headed the National Search Commission of Mexico and led the search efforts for over 100,000 missing persons.
Before that, she served as the Head of the Victims’ Federal Public Defense in Mexico, where she worked toward enhancing access to justice, providing psychosocial assistance and reparations to victims of human rights violations. Additionally, she litigated several cases of human rights at the Inter-American Court of Human rights.
She is currently an Associate researcher at El Colegio de México, and an International Expert (Amicus Curiae) for the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP).
Victims celebrate appointment of new head of the IIMP
Our partners at the Truth and Justice Charter welcomed Ms. Quintana’s appointment, and expressed their optimism. Yasmen Almashan of the Caesar Families Association said:
“We are hopeful, especially that [Ms. Quintana] has worked in complex contexts like Syria’s and has an extensive experience in searching for missing persons. She appears to be very well suited to lead the IIMP.”
Khalil Alhaj Saleh of the Coalition of Families of Persons Kidnapped by ISIS (Massar) echoed this sentiment welcoming the expedited appointment of Ms. Quintana by the United Nations. He added:
“We urge Ms. Quintana to meet with representatives of victims, survivors, and their families as soon as possible to discuss an action plan and to address the chaos that we are seeing around the missing persons file. I also hope that she will appear publicly and call for the protection of records and mass graves, which is the most urgent need at the moment.”
We look forward to collaborating with Ms. Quintana and her team and supporting them to carry out the mandate of the IIMP. We also call for the full cooperation of the transitional Syrian authorities.
We will continue to support our Syrian partners, especially victims, survivors, and families, who have led the efforts over the past years to address Syria’s missing persons crisis.
Our work in Syria