International Day of the Missing: Over 8,000 People Still Sought in BiH

The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), in cooperation with the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees of BiH and associations of families of missing persons in BiH, will today mark the International Day of the Missing at Sarajevo's Children's Square, reports the Patria news agency.

– Installations – silhouettes symbolizing missing persons – will be placed at Sarajevo's Children's Square, and passers-by will be invited to write and post their messages on the installations – the ICMP announced.

Volunteers and families of missing persons will provide information on current efforts aimed at finding missing persons, but will also call on the authorities to speed up the process of finding the missing and to become more involved in marking the International Day of the Missing.

The marking will be attended by the Minister of Human Rights and Refugees of BiH, Semiha Borovac, and the ICMP representative – Head of the Western Balkans Program, Matthew Holliday.

The ICMP was established in 1996 with the aim of finding 40,000 persons missing as a result of the wars in the Western Balkans.

More than 70 percent of the missing have been found, which is an excellent result, given that a similar result has not been achieved anywhere in the world in similar post-war situations.

However, in the Western Balkans, 12,000 families still do not know the fate of their loved ones. Eight thousand of these families are from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the fall of 2015, the ICMP headquarters was moved from Sarajevo to The Hague in accordance with an international agreement signed in December 2014. However, the ICMP continues its program in the Western Balkans and will continuously provide support in finding missing persons in the region as long as financial resources for its work are secured.