The UAE will play host to the international conference on Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) today.
The two-day Coordinated Approach to Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) Conference Middle East and North Africa (Mena) is organised by the Ministry of Interior in association with the Interpol under the patronage of Lt.-General Shaikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior.
Forensic experts from Interpol and Scotland Yard will present papers on DVI.
Major-General Nasser Al Rayese, head of the victims affairs officeat the ministry and coordinator-general of the conference, said over two days, experts will focus on how criminal evidence assists forensic medicine to identify victims of disasters.
They will also discuss papers on advanced technology to recognise identity of victims and mass fatalities and mechanisms to boost DVI regional coordination.
Disaster Victim Identification is the Interpol-authorised formal and organised process of identifying multiple bodies after a mass fatality. It requires a number of skilled professionals working together to amass the evidence required to clearly identify victims and release them to their families.
The professionals involved include the police and medical experts including forensic pathologists and technicians and, depending on the nature of the incident, forensic odontologists, forensic anthropologists, toxicologists and molecular biologists
Sunday 3 February 2013
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=data/nationgeneral/2013/February/nationgeneral_February31.xml§ion=nationgeneral
I would like to state that Interpol is not the authorising body of a DVI mission. Even the Interpol DVI guide itself declares in chapter 10 p.50 that "Every DVI operation is subject to the laws of the country in which the disaster in question occurs." The national sovereignty is inviolable in all cases. The disaster-bound nations government is the head of operations. This obviously leads to problems in DVI missions in so called failed states, an issue I am working on since 2010.
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