On 30 September and 1 October 2019 IOM GMDAC hosted a meeting in Berlin, Germany, to kick-start the research for its project on the experiences and needs of families of missing migrants in Ethiopia, the UK, Spain and Tunisia. The GMDAC project team, IOM colleagues from the country offices and external experts, including people from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), discussed how previous research and experience on the ground can inform the project’s design and methodology. The project aims to fill research gaps and to provide recommendations for how actors (including IOM, governments, community groups and other organizations) can better support families of missing migrants. It is an extension of the data-centred work of IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, which is based at GMDAC, and which records whenever someone dies on migration journeys worldwide. The findings of this research project on the families of the missing will be published by fall 2020.