As we mark Missing Persons Day, we must ask ourselves: is the Kosovar side committed to resolving this problem for 18 years?
In August 2013, as Executive Director of the Center for Research, Documentation and Publication, a member of the Association of Missing Persons asked me to write a letter to Ms Ulrike Lunacek, Vice-President of the European Parliament. and member of the delegation for relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, to ask him to exercise his authority and place greater emphasis on the issue of missing persons in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue.
In order to help the victims of the conflict in Kosovo and to promote peace and stability in Kosovo and the region, I was very disturbed by the fact that the issue of missing persons, one of the most sensitive, was not considered a priority during the negotiations, even if its importance was mentioned by all stakeholders as a way forward in the process of settling the past in the Western Balkans. After seeing family members feel desperate to learn the fate of their loved ones, I was perplexed by the idea of speaking for the voiceless.
For 18 years, the families of the disappeared have been searching for the truth and, very often, state representatives openly tell them that there is nothing more they can do. The Commission on Missing Persons is moving this case forward with mediation from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the ICRC, but fewer and fewer bodies are being found over the years. The agency is part of the Prime Minister’s office, but it appears too weak to pursue the case. And this seems to go hand in hand with the government itself.
If the Kosovo delegation cannot insist further because it is dealing with a state that withholds information and is not very cooperative, there is always another solution. There are ways to put pressure on the international community, the EU in particular, and to call on the various instruments that the EU itself has put in place to facilitate reconciliation in the Western Balkans.
One of these instruments is the EU Enlargement Strategy to strengthen regional cooperation and reconciliation in the Western Balkans, which obliged Western Balkan states to strengthen cooperation and reconciliation in a region that has recently suffered from major conflicts. Regional cooperation and good neighborly relations are essential elements of the Stabilization and Association process and, as such, have been closely monitored by the Commission at all stages of the accession process. The newly adopted EU policy framework on transitional justice provides a comprehensive framework and should be used as a reference to evaluate implementation on the ground.
To this day, I am deeply concerned that the EU is pursuing a dual policy: on the one hand, it is urging the Western Balkan countries to deal with the past as part of an EU enlargement strategy aimed at strengthening regional cooperation, and on the other hand, it is not making sufficient efforts to persuade the Serbian and Kosovar governments to provide information on the fate of more than 1,600 people still missing in Kosovo.
It is absolutely necessary to resolve the issue of missing persons through the process of normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, so that the situation on the ground begins to resemble some form of normality. If this does not happen, the entire process of negotiations and reconciliation risks collapsing without any results.
The right to know, as the first pillar of transitional justice, is guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the ICCPR, and its regional counterparts such as the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms , the ECHR. Former EU negotiators preferred to characterize the issue of missing persons as humanitarian rather than political, insisting that the subject would jeopardize dialogue and lead to the failure of the process. As a result, it was definitively postponed.
However, it is obvious that Kosovo cannot force Serbia to open the archives and demand accountability. The issue must therefore be resolved through negotiations. The ICRC has done tremendous work so far. Although the ICRC is an impartial, neutral and independent organization whose mission is exclusively humanitarian, it must be remembered that there is nothing new about humanitarian issues being at the forefront of national and international politics. . And the problem does not only come from Serbia which does not open its archives and does not cooperate.
A certain responsibility must also be assumed alongside us. The Kosovo government and its institutions emphasize the lack of information about the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the individuals who kidnapped and killed civilians from the Serbian and Roma communities. If not the institutions, some people within those institutions must know something.
Let us not forget that the Fourth Geneva Convention Article 32 requires parties to a conflict (the KLA was a party to the conflict) to facilitate investigations into persons missing as a result of hostilities. An additional protocol for the Geneva Conventions of 1977 “requires each party to the conflict to search for persons reported missing by the opposing party.” These provisions are complementary to universal guarantees anchored in human rights, and the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo qualifies war crimes as serious violations of Geneva law. Agreements.
No one denies the fact that Serbia was a consolidated state with great political and military power and as such committed crimes through an organized, top-down chain of command.
But let’s ask ourselves: is the Kosovar side really determined to resolve this problem all these years? Because negotiations require that both parties cooperate, and not just in finding the culprit. I see how our institutions have dragged this issue out for years, in the absence of political will to shed light on this problem. the fate of more than 2,500 Serbian and Roma civilians were killed and disappeared during the Kosovo War. As a result, we will now have a specialized chamber that will deal in depth with civilians taken hostage, tortured and killed by the KLA.
And let us emphasize once again that no one seeks to equate crimes – crimes cannot be equated. The veracity of documented evidence, including forensic evidence, means that the number of Albanian civilian casualties and disappearances was much higher than that of other communities in Kosovo. But we must face this ultimate fact: in war it is legal to fight, and it is legal to kill, but only between people equally armed and in uniform.
When we talk about missing persons, we are talking about missing civilians who should have been protected by people in uniform. By those who had power for a moment, but who abused it.
