A UN Human Rights Council working group said that four Balkan countries have made little progress in depoliticising the issue of resolving the fate of missing persons from the 1990s wars.
The UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on Wednesday criticised Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo for treating the problem of missing persons as a political issue.
It said that the governments often make a deliberate choice not to share relevant information, or to share it only when some other information is received in exchange.
“This not only affects the right to truth of the victims and their relatives, but also the right to justice,” the working group said in an addendum to its latest report.
It expressed concern that bilateral cooperation between Croatia and Serbia has hit stalemate, and called for it to be resumed as soon as possible.
It also expressed regret over the lack of cooperation between Kosovo and Serbia, saying that the “process of exchange of information with a view to clarifying the fate of the missing persons has practically stopped”.
It appealed to Montenegro to establish enforced disappearance as a separate offence in the country’s criminal legislataion, and criticised the “little progress” that the country has made in investigating and prosecuting war crimes.
In its recommendations for the entire region, the UN working group called for more efforts to fully implement the Declaration on the Role of the State in Addressing the Issue of Persons Missing as a Consequence of Armed Conflict and Human Rights Abuses, particularly its section about the prosecution of war crimes.
It noted that efforts have been made to address past misidentifications of missing persons, but expressed concern that “access to archives and disclosure of relevant information on cases of enforced disappearances remain problematic”.
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