Mostar -- Leaders of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, conferred in Mostar on Friday where they will sign a declaration on missing persons.

The document aims to encourage the search for people missing in the wars both in the Balkan region and elsewhere in the world.

The declaration on the role of the state in the closure of the fate of persons missing in conflicts and abuse of human rights will be signed by Serbian President Tomislav Nikolićc, Croatian President Ivo Josipović, Chair of the Bosnian Presidency Bakir Izetbegović, and Montenegrin President Filip Vujanović.

The conference was organized by the International Commission on Missing Persons.

It comes ahead of International Day of the Disappeared, observed on August 30, and was opened by Chairman of the International Commission on Missing Persons Thomas Miller.

Ahead of the signing of the declaration on missing persons in Mostar, Nikolićc stated that the Serbian government "agrees with the text of the document completely."

The document should serve as the start of a global initiative which would gather all countries facing the problem of people gone missing in clashes, and the document states that the unsolved fate of people missing in wars further prolongs the suffering of the victims' families, which is why the problem needs to be tackled in an efficient and responsible way, Tanjug reported.

According to the available data, out of the nearly 40,000 people gone missing in conflicts in the territory of former Yugoslavia, around 11,000 people are still reported as missing and their fate is still uknnown.