Search for identity Struggle to put names to bodies found in sea

Four years ago, the remains of a toddler encased in a lifejacket and a navy snowsuit washed up on a beach in southern Norway, having spent the previous two months being carried on North Sea currents.

- Linda Geddes

Four years ago, the remains of a toddler encased in a lifejacket and a navy snowsuit washed up on a beach in southern Norway, having spent the previous two months being carried on North Sea currents. Though his face was barely recognisable, publicity about the sinking of the migrant boat he had been on, and suspicions about his identity, enabled Norwegian police to locate a relative to whom his DNA could be matched, providing this lonely corpse with a name: Artin Iran Nezhad.

Others remain nameless. Of the tens of thousands who die trying to reach Europe, only about a fifth are ever formally identified. For their relatives, this lack of closure is a continuing trauma. A recently established network of forensic scientists is trying to change this, through the development of new technologies and processes to aid identification efforts.

Launched in November last year, Migrant Disaster Victim Identification (MDVI) Action brings together expertise from across Europe to address what its chair, Prof Caroline Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University, describes as a growing humanitarian crisis of unidentified deceased migrants in Europe.

"It is thought that at least 25,000 people have died in the last 10 years crossing the Mediterranean alone, and that's not even accounting for those who die on land and other routes," said Wilkinson.

"Only 25% of those are ever formally identified - and those are just the ones where the bodies are found. There will be thousands of other bodies that have never been recovered from those migrant disasters."

Though there is no official record of how many people have died trying to cross the Channel, a recent report by openDemocracy estimated there were at least 391 deaths between 1999 and 2023, while the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) has already proclaimed 2024 the deadliest year on record, with at least 57 deaths having occurred in the Channel between January and October.