Balkan Govts Dodge Signing Truth Commission Declaration
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| People sign a petition to establish RECOM in Pristina in 2014. Photo: Coalition for RECOM. |
The Western Balkans Summit in London will end on Tuesday without representatives of Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia signing a declaration on the establishment of RECOM, the Regional Commission for the Establishment of Facts on War Crimes and Other Serious Violations of Human Rights in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia.
Despite promises by the governments of the four countries that their leaders will sign the document leading to the establishment of RECOM at the summit – as a part of the so-called ‘Berlin Process’ regional cooperation initiative – the signing ceremony was cancelled.
The organiser of the summit, the British Foreign Office, removed the ceremony from the official agenda because the Coalition for RECOM – a group of NGOs that have been campaigning for the commission – did not receive official statements from the four governments that they will take part.
Natasa Kandic, the coordinator of the Coalition for RECOM, told BIRN that it was “a huge political embarrassment”.
“It’s a pity because the singing of the declaration at the summit would additionally enhance the [Coalition for RECOM’s] advocacy strategy towards Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia, which are yet to accept RECOM,” Kandic said.
“It’s also a pity, because in the history of the summit, this is the first initiative that was born in the Western Balkans, created by civil society in the region,” she added.
The Coalition for RECOM however sees the non-signing as a temporary setback and believes it will take place in the future.
So far only the government of Montenegro has tasked its foreign minister with drawing up papers for the signing of the declaration, while the other countries’ governments have not discussed the issue at all.
In recent months, the prime minister of Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia have promised the Coalition for RECOM that they will sign the declaration.
According to the Coalition for RECOM’s action plan, the fact-finding commission should be established in 2021 and start its work in 2022, ending in 2025.
RECOM intends to put together a name-by-name list of all the people killed, missing, imprisoned and tortured people in all the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.
The Coalition for RECOM started gathering signatures of support for the initiative in 2011 in all the capital cities of the republics of the former Yugoslavia, as well as online.
It set out to get a million signatures, and has so far got over 600,000.
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