Region governments agree on creating databases for missing people in former Yugoslavia

At the 14th regional conference on exhumation and identification of people missing during the 1990s wars, held in Belgrade on Friday, it was said that a unique database for people found will be established at The Hague.

Representatives of Bosnian, Croatian, Kosovo, Montenegrin and Serbian governments, as well as several international organisations, have agreed to establish the database, a representative of the victims' family associations said.

Olga Bozanic, chairman of the Regional Co-ordination Body Board of Family Associations, warned that there has been a decline in activity in recent years when it comes to tracking down victims' remains.

“in most cases, politics is involved when we demand that some countries be searched”, Bozanic told BIRN after the conference.

But Bozanic said she was pleased that representatives of all government bodies and international organisations present have agreed to create the list of missing persons.

The “occurred in the past that some individuals were reported missing in several different countries”, she said.

She also noted that the number of undiscovered persons has been subject to political manipulation.

Bozanic added that the International Commission on Missing Persons, I CMP, has launched an online platform to help locate hidden tomb sites.

People who know mass graves, but are afraid to come to the offices of victims' associations, or do not want to be identified for any other reason, can now report what they know anonymously, Bozanic said.

The regional conference brought together representatives of state commissions for missing persons, war crimes prosecutors and representatives of 18 victims' families associations from the former Yugoslavia.

Their meeting, however, ended in squabbles, as the “state of indomitability of representatives of some families turned into outrage”, according to Bozanic.

Many still cannot overcome their emotions and fight for the truth in a dignified way. Voice raising will not help anyone”, she said.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, there are still 10,373 persons missing from the wars of the years in 10 in the former Yugoslavia.

The regional co-ordinator of the International Red Cross Committee for the Western Balkans, Zita Crener, said finding the missing should be considered a humanitarian, not political issue.

“We are adding to our efforts to call for more actions from all over”, Crener said