Pandemic Slows Search for Bosnian War Missing

Twenty-eight years since they went missing during the Bosnian war, Ferida Nisic is still searching for the remains of her brother, Mujo Music, and 10 other relatives.

"The search is your life," said Nisic, secretary of the municipality missing persons association in Hadzici, just west of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

The search for roughly 7,000 people still missing from Bosnia's 1992-95 war slowed this year, however, with the COVID-19 pandemic stymieing the efforts of the state Missing Persons Institute to bring some degree of closure to families across the country.

An estimated 32,000 people went missing during the war. To date, the remains of just over 25,000 have been exhumed, all but roughly 1,000 of them since identified and handed over to their families for burial.

This year, up to the end of November, the mortal remains of 62 victims of the war were exhumed, compared to 97 last year and 134 in 2018, the Missing Persons Institute told BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina, BIRN BiH.

Of the 62, 27 were found on the territory covered by the Institute's Eastern Sarajevo field office and 19 in the area around the Tuzla office, northeast of the capital. In most cases, the bodies were incomplete, often the result of being moved by the perpetrators in an effort to conceal war crimes.

The Institute told BIRN BiH that the pandemic had "significantly aggravated and temporarily suspended" its work.

For two months, the Institute halted operations after the Bosnian government prohibited gatherings in public places of more than five people. "This actually happened in the spring, when most exhumations usually take place," it said.

In terms of identifying the remains, 51 victims were identified in the first 11 months of this...