Red Cross says 17,000 people remain missing after conflicts in former Yugoslavia

31/08/2008

GENEVA, Switzerland -- Seventeen years after the beginning of the disintegration of former Yugoslavia, an estimated 17,000 people remain missing, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced on Saturday (August 30th), the International Day of the Disappeared. The organisation urged governments in the Western Balkans to speed up the process of determining the fate of those who went missing during the armed conflicts of the 1990s. According to the ICRC, the number of missing in BiH is 12,817. In Croatia, this figure is 2,374, while in Kosovo the number of people whose fate remains unclear is 2,000.

Estimates by the Institute of Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina are higher. It estimates about 30,000 people went missing during the 1992-1995 conflict. The remains of about 17,000 have been found so far, but the fate of the other 13,000 is unclear. (Tanjug, B92 - 30/08/08)