A/HRC/59/49 process and hindering their ability to locate the site of the disappearance and to recover and identify the remains.123 71. The lack of effective investigation and identification procedures can also result in family members having difficulty obtaining certificates of absence. In such situations, family members are often unable to access the inheritance of disappeared persons, which leads to economic hardship.124 VII. Monitoring and prevention of migrant disappearances 72. The Special Rapporteur welcomes promising developments in the establishment by States, in cooperation with civil society organizations, families and victims, of national and regional mechanisms aimed at searching for disappeared migrants and preventing and investigating migrant disappearances. 73. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies have an online tool, “Trace the Face”, a website that helps people identify and locate their missing relatives abroad. Thus far, through the website, 300 people who were looking for missing relatives and their families have succeeded in reestablishing contact. Maintaining family links along migratory routes to prevent migrants from going missing is another focus of the collaboration between ICRC, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the rescue ship Ocean Viking, as part of Operation Salamat, which facilitates “safe and well” messages from migrants rescued at sea and relays them to their families worldwide. 125 Since 2014, the IOM, through its Missing Migrants Project, has documented people who die or disappear while migrating to an international destination, regardless of their migratory status. The Border Project (Proyecto Frontera), led by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, has succeeded in identifying hundreds of migrants who have disappeared along the border between Mexico and the United States.126 74. Regional mechanisms have been established between a number of States, including the Mechanism for Mexican Support Abroad in Search and Investigation Activities, which operates in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. It facilitates the reporting of disappearances at Mexican consulates in the countries of origin of family members of disappeared migrants in the region. 127 Since 2013, the Comisión Forense, a non-governmental organization, focuses its work on the identification of the victims of three massacres that involved the disappearance of migrants in Mexico, with the collaboration of experts from the Mexican Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. 128 Forensic databases of disappeared migrants, established by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team in cooperation with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, which contain collected cases of disappeared migrants of various nationalities and genetic profiles of their family members, have led to 392 forensic identifications. The bureau for the search of missing migrants operates as an inter-institutional space for the coordination, exchange and actualization of information on migrant disappearances between Mexican institutions, institutions of countries of origin of migrants and their families and victims, with a transnational focus.129 In addition, the trilateral coordination mechanism between Colombia, Panama and the United States seeks the 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 16 See https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2024/02/relatives-disappeared-migrants-seek-answers-andjustice. Gabriella Citroni, “Practical, legal and psychological issues related to the protection of the dead in cases of enforced disappearance “, International Review of the Red Cross (January 2025), p. 5. See https://missingpersons.icrc.org/news-stories/rescued-sea-sending-safe-and-well-messagesmigrants-families-0. See https://eaaf.org/proyecto-frontera/. Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law, “Estudio de análisis del mecanismo de Apoyo exterior Mexicano de Búsqueda e Investigación” (June 2024); and OHCHR, “La desaparición en el contexto de la migración en México y América Central”. See https://www.fundacionjusticia.org/ejes/comision-forense/. See https://comisionacionaldebusqueda.gob.mx/acciones-de-busqueda/.