Little hope, but the EU expects "the commission to contribute to clarifying the fate of the missing"
A little over a year after the failed attempt, on Thursday night the European Union managed to bring together representatives of Kosovo and Serbia in a joint meeting, making the Joint Commission on Missing Persons operational.
Acting Deputy Prime Minister for Dialogue, Besnik Bislimi, praised the meetings that launched the work of the commission, which aims to oversee the implementation of the Joint Declaration on the Missing, reached on May 2, 2023, as successful.
The Chairman of the Government Commission on Missing Persons, Andin Hoti, wrote that Kosovo demanded the implementation of the declaration, including access to classified archives of Serbian institutions and the military, as well as the acceleration of work in the field.
The EU Special Representative for the Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue, Peter Sorensen, said that the Commission aims, as he put it, "to shed light on the fate of missing persons, including those forcibly disappeared."
"The European Union has high expectations that the Joint Commission will contribute significantly to clarifying the fate of missing persons and help close a painful chapter for families who have waited too long for answers," said Sorensen.
Although they considered the agreement good news, referring to decades of experience, the Humanitarian Law Center in Kosovo does not have high expectations.
The Director of the HLC in Kosovo, Bekim Blakaj, stressed that "unfortunately, over the years, the issue of the missing has been treated more as a political issue than a humanitarian one" and that this brings about a loss of hope and disappointment.
"We are not very optimistic that all the points of the Joint Declaration will be implemented. Of course, some of them can be implemented, such as the inclusion of the victims' families in this process, their better information, perhaps even for exhumation, respectively the tracking of suspected mass graves," said Blakaj.
Although he says it is good that the parties are expected to meet more often, Blakaj is skeptical about the issue of the archives, as full access to them would mean opening the way for legal prosecution.
"Certain archive files may be opened, but the data on the fate of missing persons may not be in these archives, or certain elements may have been removed from these archives a long time ago. I say this because this then also attracts criminal liability," said Blakaj, writes RTVDukagjini.
On May 2, 2023, in Brussels, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, in the Joint Declaration on the Missing, agreed that this issue should be treated as humanitarian and urgent.
However, two years and eight months later, the first meeting of the Joint Commission was held - the functioning of which was blocked by Serbia, initially by refusing to agree on the Terms of Reference and then by not participating in the first, constitutive meeting.
According to the Terms of Reference, agreed in December 2024, six meetings should be held in the first six months of operationalization – one each month.
