In Bosnia and Herzegovina, a survivor’s search...

August 30th. It is the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.

More than 20 years after the end of the war in the Western Balkans, it’s a painful reminder that families in Bosnia and Herzegovina are still frantically searching for 12,000 missing relatives.

“It will stay forever engraved in my heart and soul,” explains Z.B., recalling the fateful night in 1992 when his mother, sister and two brothers were killed by the military.

On the night of 25 July, military rounded up and massacred 29 persons in his village in northwestern Bosnia. Hundreds of men were taken to detention camps. Z. B. ran away that night. He was the only survivor from his family.

“It was around 8.30 at night. I saw a soldier in front of the house in camouflage uniform and hat,” recalls Z.B., who was 14 at the time. “Women and children were already in a group in the garden. When [the soldiers] started firing their guns, I ran to a nearby house. A neighbour named Milan protected me there for eight days.”

There are few pre-war photos of Z.B.’s family. "That´s all I have, nothing more. Just those pictures and my memories,” he says.

In the picture (above), his mother and sister are on the left, his brothers on the right. He assumed they were probably dead, but it was only after returning to his village, in 2000, that he learned their bodies were missing.

“It's difficult. I saw they were killed, and for 25 years we keep searching [for their remains]. I always thought that as I get older, I will think about it less. But the opposite is true," says Z.B.

"Every year, I ask: 'Dear God, will I ever find them?' I can't handle the emotion."

Now 39, married and with two sons, Z.B. is obstinately pursuing a quest to find the remains of his mother, sister and two brothers.

“My wife sometimes asks whether I am present in the room. But I just get lost in my thoughts...I say that most of us who have survived horrible things during the war, we don't have a healthy life. We don't have a healthy way of thinking.”

Whenever he hears about a new grave, he calls people in the prosecutors office to check. "Wherever I see that there's a small hill somewhere, everywhere I see an opportunity that it could be a grave," he says. Once, when the teams didn't go and investigate a tip, he pursued it himself. "I took my tools and my cousin and we went there to dig ourselves.”

Although he hasn't successfully identified his own missing family members, Z.B. heads to a burial and tribute to other victims. Every year he helps bury community members whose remains are exhumed from mass graves, identified, then given a dignified farewell. He says it is helping him find peace.

On the 25th commemoration of the massacre, over 500 people came to the collective funeral. 23 identified remains were escorted by families to local cemeteries. The youngest victim was 18 years and the eldest 72 years.

For the first time, leaders from several ethnic groups were present.

“That's a big step forward for this city. That’s the coexistence, the reconciliation that we all want,” Z.B. says.

To date 2,325 civilians killed near Z.B.’s village have been found at 450 different locations. Across the Western Balkans, investigators have dug up mortal remains as far away as hundreds of kilometers from where the victims lived. It explains why identifying the missing and prosecuting war crimes requires so much cross-border work.

With support from UNDP, State prosecutors from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia have agreed to intensify their cooperation to process war crimes more quickly and accelerate the search for missing persons, delivering justice to their relatives.

Out of the 323 remains left in the Šejkovaca Identification Centre in Bosnia, 63 victims were identified by DNA analysis by families but not yet buried. In some cases they are incomplete mortal remains, and families are waiting to find other parts of the body. In other cases, the family awaits to find other missing members of their family so that they can bury them together.

260 remains have not yet been identified.

An exhibition, "Guilty for nothing" by local painter Mensur Beslagic, was inspired by the same titled book that collects 3176 profiles of civilians killed during the war between 1992-1995.

Z.B. and his youngest son visit the exhibition and look at a drawing of Z.B.’s cousin, killed on 25 July 1992 at the age of 6.

“When I walk these woods and these fields, I remember that violently ended childhood,” says Z.B.

"All of this reminds me of my brothers, we used to play here. Everywhere you look... I don't know if I could live if I didn't remember how we used to play once, how we used to climb trees. That’s how, even though they have no graves, I keep them here always."

Now his sons play in these woods. He is raising them to be aware, but free of the past.

“I teach my kids not to look at people based on their origin. You have to tell them the truth, but put aside any sort of hatred,” he says.

“It only matters that someone is human,” says Z.B.’s oldest son. As a father, he takes comfort in these words.

In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia's constituent republics started declaring independence, which in some case was accompanied by violent wars. Between 1992 and 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina was the site of one of these large-scale conflicts, characterized by grave violations of human rights, including mass killings, sexual violence, disappearances as a result of military action often perpetrated against civilians, and forced displacement. The conflict resulted in an estimated 100,000 deaths including approximately 8,000 individuals still listed as missing.

Fulfilling the right of families of the missing to truth and justice contributes to strengthening the rule of law in the region.

“By supporting the dialogue between the national partners in the Western Balkans, UNDP contributes to a crucial precondition for the future of the region – confidence in the judicial system and the fact that missing persons would be searched for and identified regardless of ethnicity, nationality, or religion,” said Klaudia Kuljuh, Coordinator of the Regional Project.