During their three-day visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, a delegation of 25 members of the European Union’s Working Group for the Western Balkans (COWEB) led by Ambassador Peter Sørensen, Head of the Delegation of the European Union to BiH/European Union Special Representative visited the headquarters of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in Sarajevo today. The delegation was received by ICMP’s Director-General Kathryne Bomberger, where it was briefed about ICMP’s assistance to the countries of the Western Balkans and to other countries around the world.

The COWEB delegation was informed about ICMP’s efforts to assist the governments in the region of the former Yugoslavia account for persons missing from the conflicts of the 1990’s where an unprecedented 70% of the 40,000 persons missing have been accounted for. The delegation also toured ICMP’s DNA identification laboratory in Sarajevo to learn about ICMP’s advances in DNA identification techniques, which have so far helped in identifying more than 18,000 missing persons from around the world including from the Western Balkans.

Since 2004 the European Union has supported the work of the ICMP with over 3 million Euro.