يشارك
The Hague, 19 April 2024 – This week at the Headquarters of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in The Hague, associations of families of the missing from the Western Balkans, together with ICMP, organized an extraordinary session of the Forum of the Families (FoF).
Participants reflected on progress that has been made in implementing the Framework Plan agreed in November 2018 by the responsible institutions from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia to boost cooperation and increase effectiveness in accounting for missing persons throughout the region; and they made preparations for future activities, including raising awareness among regional and international stakeholders on the urgent need to maintain efforts to account for the remaining missing persons.
Participants expressed concern that current political dynamics in the Western Balkans are hindering the work of the Missing Persons Group (MPG), which comprises domestic institutions from the region that work on this issue and are responsible for efforts to account for 11,000 people who are still missing from the Yugoslav conflict. In this regard, organizations represented at today’s meeting will intensify outreach efforts with the international community, regional governments, and others to ensure that the relevant institutions have the support they need in order to carry out their work.
Participants also prepared for a meeting in Brussels planned for later this year, at which the MPG will make a presentation to the EU Parliament.
In its regular sessions, the FoF is a platform for direct exchange between family associations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Serbia, gathered as the Network and the MPG. The FoF is part of a regional project implemented by ICMP and funded by the governments of the United Kingdom and Germany. ICMP, with the support of the two governments, facilitates regional cooperation by fostering multilateral exchange including the use of modern technology such as a single, shared data repository that can be accessed by relatives of missing persons.
About ICMP
ICMP is a treaty-based intergovernmental organization with Headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. Its mandate is to secure the co-operation of governments and other authorities in locating persons missing as a result of conflicts, human rights abuses, disasters, organized violence and other causes and to assist them in doing so.
