More than a quarter of a century after the end of the war in Kosovo, the country’s ability to identify the missing is severely crippled by staff shortages, inadequate forensic equipment, outdated infrastructure, and lack of political will.
Approximately 300 human remains —possibly war victims—have been held in the Prishtina mortuary for the last 25 years. They are still awaiting identification, but the process has been delayed because of the damaged condition of the remains and the need for further testing to be done abroad.
The Institute of Forensic Medicine, IML, in Prishtina—the country’s foremost institution tasked with processing war-related remains—is still operating without a forensic archaeologist. This key role has been vacant since the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, transferred its responsibilities to local authorities in 2018, with the change of its mandate.
Kosovo also has no digital system or database for registering missing persons and other war victims.
Furthermore, the process of finding, recovering, and identifying the remains of approximately 1,600 people who disappeared during the 1998-99 Kosovo war is marked by political obstacles in collaboration with Serbia and systemic institutional challenges.
Identification efforts hindered by reduced forensic capacity
Kosovo University Clinical Centre, QKUK. Photo: BIRN
Around 300 human remains—suspected victims of war crimes during the Kosovo war—are kept in IML’s facilities in Prishtina.
Many have been sent to The Hague, but DNA extraction is not always successful.
“Some are badly damaged—fragmented or burned—making DNA profiling extremely difficult,” Ditor Haliti said.
One of the key challenges in identifying the remains of the war missing is that there is no forensic archaeologist in Kosovo’s Institute of Forensic Medicine, IML—a position that has remained vacant for around seven years, since the EULEX mandate changed and it transferred responsibilities to local authorities.
Ditor Haliti, deputy director of IML, explained that without this expertise authorities face serious challenges in the process of locating and recovering remains.
“The forensic archaeologist analyses soil to determine if the ground has been disturbed, which can indicate potential burial sites,” Haliti told Kallxo.com
Valon Hyseni, a forensic expert at IML, explained that the process begins with determining whether the recovered bones are human or animal. If confirmed as human, a biological profile is created, and DNA samples are extracted and sent to the ICMP Laboratory in The Hague.
The identification reports from The Hague can take between three to six months to arrive, depending on the condition of the bones.
“This doesn’t mean full skeletons [are sent],” Hyseni clarified, adding that “sometimes a single bone is enough to identify a person.”
In 2024, Kosovo received 124 DNA reports from The Hague, resulting in 38 new identifications, 26 of which were on the official missing persons list.
Andin Hoti, head of the Government Commission for Missing Persons, noted that despite financial investment, Kosovo still has very limited capacity for conducting advanced forensic testing locally.
Moreover, Kosovo still lacks a public, centralised database of the missing. While the Ministry of Finance maintains a closed registry for pension purposes, no accessible national database exists.
The “Kosovo Memory Book,” published in July 2024 by the Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, HLCK, includes the detailed narratives of the disappearance of 1,636 individuals—approximately 1,200 Albanians, 415 Serbs, and several Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian victims.
Bekim Blakaj, executive director of HLCK, sees the lack of a unified database as a failure of the state.
“It’s unacceptable that, even after 25 years, Kosovo still lacks a digital system for tracking missing persons and other war victims,” he said.
Limited collaboration with Serbia
Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic (L), EU High Representative Josep Borrell (2-L) and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti (R) at a meeting of the EU-Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue in Brussels on February 27, 2023. Photo: EPA/STEPHANIE LECOCQ
Despite a joint declaration signed by Kosovo and Serbia in December 2024 -pledging full implementation of the “Declaration on Missing Persons,” initially adopted in May 2023, there is no real progress.
The agreement was meant to facilitate access to classified and credible information, ensure the availability of relevant documents, and establish a joint working commission led by the European Union.
Blakaj from HLCK said that “the issue of missing people is not being dealt with properly. It is clear that, at least in Serbia, the missing are still being handled as a political issue.”
Silvana Marinkovic, a civil society activist from Gracanica, says families are no longer surprised by the failed promises.
“It’s not the first time families have been given false hope. Like before, we can’t establish an effective dialogue,” she says.
Ditor Haliti told Kallxo.com that there is cooperation between Kosovo authorities and families from the ethnic Serb community. Haliti explained that “whenever we’ve contacted them, they’ve responded. The impression that there’s no cooperation isn’t always accurate.”.
There have even been cases where Serbian institutions provided additional blood samples at Kosovo’s request, allowing for the successful matching of DNA profiles.
“When we found matches, we immediately informed the families that their relatives had been identified and were in our morgue,” Haliti said.
Serbia did not identify any of the remains of the war missing in 2024.
Natasha Kandic of the Belgrade based NGO Humanitarian Law Centre declared that the only action the government undertook was the identification of one potential site near the border with Kosovo.
“The Declaration on Missing Persons was a positive achievement by the EU, but its implementation hasn’t even begun. The EU lacks the means of enforcement to hold Serbian and Kosovan leaders to their commitments.”
Kandic blames Serbia’s lack of progress on the leadership of its own Commission on Missing Persons.
“The Serbian Commission needs restructuring. Someone with a clean record should be leading it.”
Marinkovic argues that political will is the missing ingredient.
“It’s enough to have the information about where the possible mass graves could be. That alone should be enough to make a start. The problem is not a lack of capacity—it’s the absence of will.”
There is still no officially-agreed upon number of missing persons. The Kosovo Agency of Statistics recorded 1,407 missing in its most recent census, while the Humanitarian Law Centre reports 1,636. The Government Commission for Missing Persons puts the figure at 1,595.
English version prepared by Ardita Zeqiri