The Advisory Board of the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina has organized the Eighth Round Table in Bihac, where the representatives spoke about the achieved results and priorities in the process of seeking missing persons as well as the difficulties with which investigators are facing.
“Our goal is to help in finding and identifying missing persons in this region. We also demonstrate the uniqueness of the Governing Body of the Institute, which pays special attention to the successful completion of the process of finding and identifying missing persons. We must note that this is the most difficult post-war task and it is not surprising that it is going to be quite difficult and slow. However, we are in the direction of announcing the Central Registry of Missing Persons in BiH, which is of great importance,” said the president of the Temporary Management Board of the Missing Persons Institute in BiH, Petar Sikman.
A member of the Director of the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH, Amor Masovic, pointed out the successful cooperation with the International Commission for Missing Persons and the fact that BiH was doing a significant job since almost 80 percent of missing persons were found and identified.
“Out of 34,964 missing persons whose data were entered into the Central Register of Missing Persons, at this time, the status of missing persons was verified for 26,208 persons. The largest number of those persons whose status is verified are actually identified by the DNA method, i.e. with absolute accuracy, slightly over 14,000 persons. More than 4,000 are verified, identified by traditional methods, particularly in Sanski Most and Kljuc, where exhumations and identifications were made before the arrival of the DNA method in BiH,” Masovic said.
When it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the largest number of missing persons is from the area of the Srebrenica enclave, where more than 1,000 victims of genocide are still being searched for.
