Representatives of the Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian governmental bodies tasked with the search for missing persons have met at a conference in Lukavac organised by the International Commission on Missing Persons, ICPM, to discuss the need to improve regional cooperation.
The participants agreed that Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia should sign bilateral agreements on cooperation concerning the search for missing persons, and create one, common database for all missing people in the region.
Ivan Grujic, the president of the Croatian government commission on detained and missing persons, argues that agreement to create a regional database is vital, not only to the search for missing persons, but to working out the exact number of people still missing since the 1990’s.
“I am also very satisfied with the implementation of common regional identification projects, which have helped us identify a large number of cases, and we hope such projects can continue”, said Grujic.
Amor Masovic, a member of the Board of Directors of the Bosnian Institute, also believes that regional initiatives are the only way to speed-up the search for missing persons.
“The signing of agreements on cooperation between Bosnia and Croatia and Bosnia and Serbia will certainly improve projects where there is shared responsibility over exhumations and finally solve the missing persons issue in the region,” said Masovic.
Zorica Avramovic, a representative of the Serbian government Commission on Missing Persons added that the “common methodology and transparency” used by all missing persons institutions in the region is producing “positive results”.