26 Jun 14
The authorities in Kosovo and Serbia must show stronger political commitment to finding more than 1,700 people still missing since the 1990s conflict, a UN delegation said in Pristina.
Pristina
“This political commitment and this institutional action by all the different actors needs to be taken with a sense of urgency,” Ariel Dulitzky, the chief rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, told a press conference in the Kosovo capital on Thursday.
“Fifteen years have passed since the end of the war and more needs to be done in order to resolve the fate or the whereabouts of 1,711 persons who remain missing,” Dulitzky said.
He urged Pristina and Belgrade to show “a stronger political commitment and leadership” to finding the bodies of those who disappeared.
Another member of the UN working group, Jasmina Dzumhur, said that “a political platform” should be established so Pristina and Belgrade could resolve the issue together.
She suggested that “this humanitarian and human rights question should be part of a political process facilitated by the EU”.
Dzumhur was referring to the ongoing EU-mediated talks about normalising relations between Pristina and Belgrade, during which the missing persons issue has not been on the agenda.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has so far been mediating talks on missing persons between Kosovo and Serbia, but Dzumhur urged both sides to meet more often.
Of the 1,711 people who remain missing since the end of the conflict, over 500 are believed to be Kosovo Serbs.
The Pristina government and relatives of missing persons in Kosovo this week also urged the international community to put pressure on Belgrade to give more information on potential mass graves where the remains of Kosovo Albanians are believed to be hidden.
“We believe there are many more mass graves on the territory of Serbia,” Prenk Gjetaj, head of the Pristina government’s commission for missing persons, told the UN delegation on Tuesday.
