A year from declaration of the missing, implementation of it still far away

But a year from the signing act, it was never implemented with the promised urgency.

The Gara threat, by the Kosovo government commission for missing persons, says its implementation has remained pending due to the politicisation of the issue from Serbia.

“generally implementing this statement but also the agreement of such preliminary statements, as we have had the case with the statement under the dialogue process, statements from the London Summit, sometime in July 2018, where there were 8 pledges, or even preliminary agreements achieved, certainly challenging in the application remain due to the politicisation approach of Serbia's institutions towards this process of”, said the Covenation of the Government Commission for the Exts.

The race, while saying they expect the European Union to put more pressure on Serbia, stresses that they have repeatedly sought to open archives about allegations of mass cemetery.

“Despite re-adversation against argumentation and preservation of requests or the need for necessity, that these information would contribute to the lighting of the fate of missing persons, there is no answer in the sense of concrete answers, whether to share this information with us, or even to precisely specify, dates for the start of excavations at the already marked” locations, said Garas.

This impasse, Bekim Blakaj from the Kosovo Humanitarian Law Fund, appreciates the discouragement of family members who expect the dawning of their beloved.

He says the European Union has not done enough for this process.

This is the element that has convinced us that, however, we will have positive developments because it is said that if one party is reluctant to implement the clauses of the declaration then there may be sanctions, but this has not happened, and yet a year later, this monitoring commission has not been established and I think that this has been a release of the EU, it has to be more legitimate to create this joint” commission, said Bekim Blakay of the Fund for Human Rights.

Under the European Union's mediation, Kosovo and Serbia on May 2nd of 2023, agreed on the contents of the declaration.

It envisions the parties providing full access to reliable and accurate information that help locate and identify missing persons within January 1, 1998, December 31, 2000.

This includes all materials, notes, orders, videos, audio recordings and any other document including those of the classified status of both states.

From the last war in Kosovo, over 1600 people still figure themselves missing. /Dukagini