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SARAJEVO, June 30 (FENA) - Participants in today's conference entitled "Right to Truth" discussed the process of searching for missing persons in BiH, challenges, difficulties and activities, and agreed that the biggest obstacle in finding missing persons in BiH represents a lack of new and credible information on individual mass graves.
There are still 7,595 people on the records of missing persons during the 1992-1995 war. Therefore, the goal of the conference, as the Chairperson of Regional Coordination of Families of the Missing Persons from the Former Yugoslavia Semina Alekić said, is to constantly remind representatives of institutions in BiH, but also the general public, of the longevity of the problem and the pain and grief that families of missing persons deal with on a daily basis.
“The problem of missing persons is not only a problem of families of missing persons, but it is a problem of all BiH institutions and citizens of BiH. Without resolving the fate of missing persons and restoring their identities, there is no progress in other segments of society: the economy, return, building and restoring trust among people, building peace in BiH and the region. Families have the right to know the truth about what is happening in the process of missing persons, and it is the families who give their contribution,” Alekić emphasized.
The Institute for Missing Persons of BiH has an active role in searching for the missing, and as the chairman of the Board of Directors of the MPI Nikola Perišić said, the biggest problem is the lack of relevant information on the basis of which they could find the missing.
Head of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) program for the Western Balkans, Matthew Holliday, said that of the 30,000 people missing during the war in BiH, 70 percent have been found and identified so far. More than 3,000 mass graves were found and exhumed. There is the Law on Missing Persons of BiH and there is the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH.
“Those are the facts and that is success. But still, everyone is partially satisfied, because about 7,500 people are still searched for. The governments of Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, the European Union, ICMP, will provide support to the Institute in finding and identifying the missing. It will also support families in proving the truth and achieving justice,” Holliday said.
Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in BiH, Elmir Camić, said the ICRC had invested time and resources in searching international archives in search of information that could lead to the discovery of new graves.
The ICRC will continue to support the Institute for Missing Persons and their families for another two years, but, as he stressed, these are all obligations of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because under international and domestic law, local authorities must respond to the families of missing persons.
(FENA) A. B.
