GUIDELINES FOR ENHANCING REGIONAL CO-OPERATION IN WAR CRIMES PROCESSING, SEARCH FOR MISSING PERSONS AND ESTABLISHMENT OF A COORDINATION MECHANISM SIGNED IN SARAJEVO

Under the auspices of the United Nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Chief Prosecutor of Bosnia and Herzegovina Goran Salihović, the Attorney General of the Republic of Croatia Dinko Cvitan, the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic of Serbia Vladimir Vukčević and the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Bosnia and Herzegovina Yuri Afanasiev, signed today the guidelines for enhancing regional co-operation in war crimes processing and search for missing persons.

The guidelines will enable a more efficient work on cases of war crimes whose processing requires inter-state co-operation due to the fact that suspects, victims or evidence are located in two or more states.

The guidelines will further operationalise the existing protocols, and advance the co-operation and the joint analysis of such cases, aiming to establish the overall status of the case, including the existence of evidences.

 In future, this will help decrease the number of unresolved war crimes cases.

Moreover, the guidelines are a confirmation and a continuation of the obligations which the countries in the region undertook by signing the ICMP Declaration on the Role of the State in Addressing the Issue of Persons Missing as a Consequence of Armed Conflict and Human Rights Abuses in August 2014. Namely, around 12,000 people are still considered missing in the region, and the exchange of information will accelerate the process of learning of their destiny, including by locating mass grave sites, exhumation and identification of the missing.

As a supporter of these activities of prosecutors’ offices in the region, the United Nations will provide technical support and ensure the necessary funding for the functioning of the coordination mechanism.