Local Justice: Establishing a Central Register of Missing Persons

The Institute, INO BiH, designed the Central Register of Missing Persons, CEN, in cooperation with the International Commission for Missing Persons, ICMP. The Register, which became operational in late 2010, was made by joining thirteen distinct international and local databases containing information about missing persons.

“The current number of about 13,000 missing persons will be significantly reduced once we have verified all the names in the CEN.

“At present the Register also contains the names of the persons whose disappearance was reported only once during the course of the war. Their families have not contacted us afterwords. We suppose that those people survived the war,” said Amor Masovic, Chairman of the Board of Directors of INO BiH.

The establishment of the CEN was foreseen under Bosnia’s Law on Missing Persons, and its goal is to establish “a unique and accurate database”.

“The CEN will speed up the verification process. INO BiH has been involved in the process for several years already. We will need more time to complete the process, but the process itself is very important as we can obtain new names of missing persons, new locations where potential victims are, or reach family members who can be potential donors of blood samples that we need for DNA analysis,” says Adam Boys, Chief of Operations of ICMP.

Boys said that the establishment of the INO BiH, the adoption of the Law on Missing Persons and the establishment of the CEN were significant achievements.

Zoran Perkovic, chairman of the Steering Board of INO BiH, stressed that this project was very important for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“When we have a number of different databases, it means we have as many truths about the past events. We hope that the establishment of the Register will help us reach a single truth about the missing persons,” Perkovic said.

Members of the Institute consider that, once the verification process has been completed, they will have additional pieces of information that will help them find the remaining victims. They say that about 21,500 missing persons have been identified so far.

S.U.

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This article is made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID.) The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of Balkan investigative reporting network (BIRN) and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.