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In
late 1998, with over 3,000 Srebrenica body bags and about only 30
identifications, PHR, which had unsuccessfully lobbied local authorities
for a dedicated Bosnian identification team, proposed that the international
community assist Bosnian authorities to establish a locally operated
Srebrenica identification system that included a local forensic
pathologist, adequate facilities, and a DNA lab. In early 1999,
with funding by the International Commission on Missing Persons
from the former Yugoslavia (ICMP), established by President Clinton
in 1996 to help families of the missing through political lobbying,
funding exhumation and identification programs, and family association
support, a local team, led by a Bosnian forensic pathologist, was
in place. With all components of an identification system focused
and coordinated on Srebrenica identifications, the rate of Srebrenica
identifications increased dramatically. The following year, ICMP
completed the new storage and morgue facility and began an amibitous
plan of develping DNA labs in Bosnia with the intent of developing
a DNA reference database of all of the families of Bosnia's missing
and identifying the Srebrenica remains through matching DNA of the
remains to it.
Today, PHR has left Bosnia while
a local and national effort to exhume and identify the victims of
Srebrenica continues, as it should. Such a search for the missing
may serve as an active reminder to the families that the crimes
committed against them have not been forgotten. The process of recovery
and proper storage of the remains also bestows dignity on the memory
of the missing and can better facilitate the reintegration of the
dead into society through identification and reburial. The identification
of the remains can help families of the missing obtain a means of
release from the torment of uncertainty and open a way foward through
grief and mourning. From a larger, societal perspective, memorializing
the remains can help shape the communal grieving process and underscore
the symbolic significance of the fall of Srebrenica for generations
to come. Finally, collecting and examining the remains to determine
the cause and manner of death can serve as a powerful antidote to
revisionism and set the stage for justice.
So far, the Srebrenica remains have not been managed in a way that
best meets these goals. Fundamental questions of who "owns"
the Srebrenica remains, isolated and narrow institutional agendas
that bypass the importance of identification, and inaccessible information
that deprive families of their right to know what is happening to
the body of their son, their husband, or their father, prolongs
the families' painful uncertainty. The lack of balance and clarity
between humanitarian versus judical goals and local versus international
roles and reponsibilities continues to plague the recovery and identification
process, and is a sign of the failure of the involved actors to
comprehensively comprehend the meaning of the missing to community
from which they were lost.
The
response to the Srebrenica tragedy has shed light on the multidimensional
nature of the aftermath of large-scale war crimes. Many of the involved
institutions are beginning to appreciate the moral imperative and
operational complexity of responding effectively to this post-atrocity
landscape. There is a movement underway to organize an international
conference on the missing that will capture the accumulated wisdom
of past efforts worldwide and begin the process of developing a
comprehensive model for recovering and identifying the remains of
the victims of large-scale atrocities. Without such an approach,
the fate of the victims - both living and dead - of such atrocities,
not only in Bosnia but also in places such as Rwanda, East Timor,
and Kosovo, continues to hang in the balance.
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