USAID is supporting Vietnam's efforts to identify human remains from the war through improving Vietnam’s DNA identification capacity. On July 25, Ambassador Marc Knapper visited the Center for DNA Identification (CDI) under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), USAID’s Vietnamese government partner in the Identification of Human Remains project, implemented by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).
Ambassador Knapper highlighted the productive cooperation between VAST and ICMP on improving Vietnam’s capability to identify remains from the war under this project. Since 2022, ICMP has been working on developing a modified nuclear-DNA extraction technology to address Vietnam’s challenges with heavily degraded remains samples. Through ICMP, USAID plans to equip a lab at CDI with advanced DNA equipment, techniques, and materials, enabling the center to successfully extract usable DNA from highly degraded Vietnamese bone samples.
Through this work, USAID is increasing Vietnam’s capacity to identify its own missing and dead, just as the Government of Vietnam has supported the United States’ efforts to account for U.S. personnel lost during the war.
