The agreement stipulates that the Second Humanitarian Project Plan (PPH2) “will consist of exhuming the human remains of several individuals who have been placed in a single grave known as C1.10”.
A few days after the 39th anniversary of the start of the Malvinas War, the governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom signed at the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, Switzerland, a new agreement to identify the burial remains of Argentine soldiers in a multiple cemetery in Darwin Cemetery in the Falkland Islands.
The agreement, issued by the ICRC, was signed on behalf of Argentina by its ambassador to the United Nations’ international organizations in Geneva, Federico Villegas, and his British counterpart, President of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer.
This act was followed up from the chancellor’s headquarters in Buenos Aires, by the foreign minister, Felipe Sol, relatives of the dead and former fighters, as Malvinas’s secretary wrote on his Twitter account. , And Atlntico Sur for Chancellor Daniel Vilmos, who posted photos of that meeting.
Ambassador of Argentina to the United Kingdom, “The important thing is three things,” Javier Figueroa said in statements to Talam, “The process that began in 2012 has been completed” and “It is a humanitarian initiative in which the victims and their families are respected.” North initiative.
“On this occasion, both countries were loyal to humanitarian law. We hope that the two governments will be able to resolve the conflict in accordance with the requirements of international law, through dialogue and negotiation, and the multiple calls of the international community. To resolve the sovereign dispute.”
Vilmos said on her Twitter account that the agreement “begins the second phase of the humanitarian initiative” which “will allow the identification of Argentine soldiers who fell in the fighting valiantly in Malvinas.”
We highlight the state policy that Argentina has maintained since 2012 which has already allowed, after many years of waiting, that 115 families can identify and honor their loved ones who sacrificed their lives to restore the exercise of sovereignty in the Malvinas Islands.
Daniel Filmus (@FilmusDaniel) March 18, 2021
“We shed light on the state policy that Argentina has maintained since 2012,” the official said. “After many years of waiting, it has allowed 115 families to get to know their loved ones who sacrificed their lives to restore the exercise of sovereignty in the Falkland Islands.”
The agreement stipulates that the Second Humanitarian Project Plan (PPH2) “will consist of exhuming the human remains of several individuals who have been placed in a single grave known as C1.10”.
The text issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross emphasized that “this new agreement was concluded after the implementation of the first humanitarian project plan (PPH), which led to the exhumation of the remains of 122 Argentine soldiers in the same cemetery.”
In 2012, ICRC cooperation was requested to identify 122 graves of Argentine soldiers buried in Darwin Cemetery.
In this sense, he stated that “after comparing the DNA samples with those of relatives, it was possible to identify 115 soldiers.”
He also affirmed that the International Committee of the Red Cross “has undertaken an unprecedented humanitarian forensic mission in strict compliance with its humanitarian mission”, “with the sole aim of ending the suffering of families whose loved ones have not been identified.”
The project
The ICRC confirmed that the humanitarian project plan was “the first of its kind with a specific joint mandate for two countries that were rivals in an armed conflict.”
“The International Committee of the Red Cross is tasked with identifying the soldiers who died during the armed conflict and whose graves bore the inscription” An Argentine soldier knows only God, “he said.
In this context, he noted that “the International Committee of the Red Cross, Argentina and the United Kingdom affirm their intention to work closely on the implementation of the recently signed agreement.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the work will take place in one of the cemetery sections that were excluded from the scope of the humanitarian project plan implemented in 2017, because it was not an unknown cemetery.
It also indicated that the plaque placed in 2004 stated that the remains of the first burial of the National Gendarmerie Julio Ricardo Sanchez and the Air Force soldiers Hector Aguirre, Louis Seville and Mario Luna, were found in that tomb.
He stressed that after collecting DNA samples from the relatives of the three soldiers, in 2018 it became clear that their remains were found in three individual graves with the name “the Argentine soldier whom only God knows”, so it is necessary to clarify the identity. Of the remains buried in Tomb C110.
In 2012, when the cooperation of the International Committee of the Red Cross was requested to locate 122 graves of Argentine soldiers buried in Darwin’s Cemetery, a working table was formed consisting of the advisor, the Ministry of Justice, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, the Government Notary General and the Ministry of Social Development.
In that first humanitarian initiative, 115 remains of the soldiers killed in Malvinas were identified.