The meeting discussed the process of searching for and identifying missing persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the processes of exhumation and search for remains, identification by way of the DNA analysis, as well as the use of data on missing persons as part of the evidentiary material of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On orders of acting prosecutors, investigators from the Special Department for War Crimes coordinate about a hundred exhumation processes annually, in all parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which representatives of the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina also participate, with the professional assistance of ICMP representatives in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The meeting highlighted the problems of the lack of good quality information about mass graves and locations of mortal remains, as well as about the exhumation process itself, since such exhumations often had to take place on inaccessible terrain or on land privately owned or belonging to infrastructure facilities (e.g. dams, mines, etc.); other procedural and technical difficulties in the process were also noted.

More than 7,600 missing persons are still being searched for in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and finding them is important mainly because of their families who have been searching for their remains for decades, but also because of the war crimes proceedings in which such documentation represents important evidentiary material.

It was agreed that the meetings between the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, directors of the BiH Missing Persons Institute and the ICMP in BiH would be held continuously in the period to come, so as to jointly agree on specific steps and overcome all issues arising from practical work, all that in the interest of as effective a process of tracing and identifying missing persons as possible.