The missing persons issue was one of the topics of the 2013 Regular Autumn Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, held in Strasbourg from 30 September to 4 October 2013. The PACE members discussed the Report on missing persons from Europe’s conflicts by rapporteur Jim Sheridan. MP Stefana Miladinovic, member of the delegation of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, submitted two amendments to the proposed document, which were endorsed by the members of the delegations of Serbia, the Russian Federation and Croatia.

At the meeting of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons, MP Stefana Miladinovic gave a rationale of the proposed amendments which offer full support to the existing mechanisms of bilateral and regional cooperation in the search for missing persons.

The implementation of the existing procedures has given favourable results in the search and identification of human remains in some Balkan states. Cooperation between the relevant government authorities resulted in agreements on the monitoring of the exhumations, allowing the presence of the representatives of the concerned parties and their experts on all sites they were interested in.

The Committee also stressed the cooperation between the relevant state authorities of the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Croatia in the search and identification of missing persons. The cooperation lead to a resolution of over 2000 missing persons cases on both sides’ lists in recent years.

The amendments were unanimously accepted by the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons thus becoming an integral part of the Report which was unanimously adopted at the PACE plenary session.

Svetislava Bulajic, member of Serbia’s standing delegation, spoke about the Report at the plenary session congratulating the rapporteur’s work and the quality of the Report which alters the approach to the issue. In her address she said that contemporary political and legal systems treat people instrumentally – as objects to be administered, rather than as singular beings and the apparatus of government recognises categories, not people. However, institutions and movements do not change until people demand change and the time for change is now in order to transition to a more humane society. Among other things, she stressed that enforced disappearances are the result of political violence which is an endemic feature of contemporary conflict around the globe and a phenomenon which has not received the attention it deserves.