The Colibrí Center for Human Rights is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization with the mission to end disappearance and uphold human dignity along the U.S.-Mexico border. Colibrí works in solidarity with the families of the disappeared to find truth and justice through forensic science, investigation, and community organizing. Colibrí bears witness to this unjust loss of life, accompanying families in their search and holding space for families to build community, share stories, and raise consciousness about this human rights crisis.
Through the Missing Migrant Project and DNA Program, Colibrí works with medical examiners to compare information families provide about the missing as well as DNA samples with unidentified remains recovered along the border in the hopes of giving families the answers they so deserve. Beyond the forensic work, Colibrí and impacted families build community and advocate for change through the Family Network, a network of mutual support and solidarity among families and friends of missing migrants across the Americas, and Bring them Back and Historias y Recuerdos, oral history- advocacy projects that center and amplify family voices.
Colibrí began in 2006 as the Missing Migrant Project, a small volunteer initiative inside the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner designed to organize information about people who were missing on the border to help identify the hundreds of individuals being examined by the forensic scientists in that office. In 2013, the Missing Migrant Project became the Colibrí Center for Human Rights to better address the needs of families of the missing and advocate for more structural change.
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