10 February 2015: The BiH Prosecutor’s Office is committed to the work of searching and identifying missing persons, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Gordana Tadic said today, pointing out that since 2013 the number of prosecutors working on missing persons cases has grown from one to 35.

Ms Tadic was speaking at a Town Hall meeting organized by ICMP at the Hotel Sarajevo in Sarajevo. The meeting brought together representatives of associations of families of missing persons, the BiH Missing Persons Institute (MPI), the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, and the BiH Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees to discuss what has been done to resolve missing persons issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina so far, and what has to be done in the future.

Ema Cekic, from the Association of Families of Missing Persons, Vogosca, called for a common approach by BIH institutions, including the MPI and the State Prosecutor’s Office. “Cooperation among the associations of families of the missing should also be improved,” she said. “A positive step can be made by the MPI advisory board: the MPI needs to include representatives of family associations more actively in its work. This would provide an opportunity for family associations to exchange and update information. Currently, ICMP is the only institution that is providing family associations with an opportunity to do this.”

ICMP began the meeting by presenting BiH, Missing Persons from the Armed Conflicts of the 1990s: A Stocktaking, a book-length report which describes two decades of efforts to account for the missing and examines specific issues in Lower Podrinje, Upper Podrinje, Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Posavina, Central Bosnia, Northeast Bosnia and Western Bosnia.

Town Hall meetings to discuss further steps in accounting for the missing in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be held on 12 February at Hotel Bristol in Mostar and on 17 February at Hotel Bosna in Banja Luka.