Sarajevo May 2019: The process of accounting for missing persons from the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina has resulted in the identification of more than 23,000 of the approximately 30,000 missing persons. Of this number, around 8,000 were identified by traditional methods of presumptive identification, and more than 15,000 were identified based on DNA analysis. However, approximately 3,000 cases of human remains that have been exhumed from gravesites over the years remain unidentified, or NN (nomen nescio/no name).
In 2013, the BIH Chief Prosecutor ordered a review of the NN cases in permanent and temporary mortuary facilities in BIH, in order to establish the scope of the problem and the potential reasons for the inability to match the DNA profiles from NN cases to any of the genetic references that ICMP has collected from relatives of missing persons. To undertake this task, the Office of the Chief Prosecutor assembled NN…