Public Advocates for the Initiative RECOM met with the Ambassadors of EU

Belgrade, June 21^st, 2012

Advocates for the Initiative for RECOM informed the ambassadors about the results and challenges they faced in the process of acquiring support from state institutions, which they hope will ultimately take over responsibility for establishing RECOM. At a meeting of ambassadors from EU member states, held in Belgrade yesterday, Ambassador Vincent Degert, Head of the Delegation of the European Commission to Serbia, reminded participants that EU institutions supported the Initiative for establishing RECOM, because it contributes to the strengthening of regional cooperation in dealing with the past. The Public advocates asked the ambassadors for their support and assistance in their communications with local politicians, to ensure that the RECOM process will become an inter-governmental project, which offers a true resolution to the problems of the recent past and one that guarantees that such crimes will not recur. The advocates also presented the first volume of the ‘Kosovo Memory Book’, an HLC and HLC Kosovo project which documents the names and circumstances of all of the victims of the armed conflict in Kosovo in 1998, as a proof of the resolve of human rights organizations to help accomplish the most important objective of RECOM, which is to name all of the killed and missing persons from the wars waged during 1990’s.

The ambassadors offered their support for the process of reconciliation in the region through truth-telling from the perspective of victims, which is offered by the Initiative for RECOM. They underlined that the process of dealing with the recent past is of great importance for the region.

Public advocates, Nataša Kandić and Dinko Gruhonjić, and a member of the Coalition for RECOM, Maja Mićić from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, participated in the meeting on behalf of the Coalition for RECOM.