Western Balkans Leaders Appoint Personal Envoys for Drafting of the Agreement on the Establishment of RECOM

Sarajevo, Belgrade, Podgorica, Skopje, and Pristina

20 December 2017

Western Balkans Leaders Appoint Personal Envoys for Drafting of the Agreement on the Establishment of RECOM

The Presidents of Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo, and the Bosniak Member of the Presidency of BiH, have appointed Personal Envoys, who will, together with the Coalition for RECOM, prepare a draft Agreement on the Establishment of RECOM.

The Envoy of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, is Tanja Jovic, Foreign Affairs Advisor to the President of Serbia; the Envoy of the President of Montenegro, Filip Vujanovic, is Professor Sonja Tomovic Sundic PhD, Advisor to the President of Montenegro for Human and Minority Rights; the Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov’s Envoy is Ilija Isajlovski, a career diplomat and a member of the Cabinet of the President of Macedonia; the Envoy of the President of Kosovo, Hashim Taci, is Ardian Arifaj, a Political Advisor to the Kosovo President, and the Envoy of the BiH Presidency Member, Bakir Izetbegovic, is Elvir Camdzic, an expert on international relations and the Head of the Cabinet of the Bosniak Member of the BiH Presidency.

According to the agreement of the Coalition for RECOM and the leaders of the Western Balkans (WB), the Draft Agreement on the Establishment of RECOM will be signed by the Prime Ministers at the Berlin Process summit in London in July 2018, after which the Presidents and the BiH Presidency will initiate procedures for the candidacy and election of RECOM members, in accordance with the Draft Statute of RECOM. The Statute was jointly drafted by the previous Envoys of the Presidents and the BiH Presidency and the Coalition for RECOM in October 2014. The Statute of RECOM has defined the tasks of this commission as follows:

 

• Collecting information on war crimes cases and other gross violations of human rights;

 

• Collecting information pertaining to the fate of missing persons and cooperating with the competent bodies of the Parties to the Agreement conducting the search for the missing;

 

• Compiling registers of civilians and combatants whose loss of life or disappearance was caused by the war or other form of armed conflict;

 

• Collecting information on places of confinement connected to the war, and on individuals who were unlawfully confined, tortured or subjected to inhumane treatment, and compiling a comprehensive list of the places and victims, with the application of identity protection measures where necessary;

 

• Researching the political and societal circumstances that decisively contributed to the outbreak of the wars or other forms of armed conflict as well as to the commission of war crimes and other gross violations of human rights;

 

• Holding public hearings of victims and other persons about war crimes and gross violations of human rights;

 

• Recommending measures to help prevent the recurrence of human rights abuses and to ensure reparations to the victims.

 

The fourth summit of the Berlin Process, to take place in July 2018 in London, is organized by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom (UK FCO), with the participation of the Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and Finance Ministers of BiH, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo (Western Balkans), and of the EU members  Germany, Austria, France, UK, and Italy, as well as Slovenia and Croatia, two of the six federal units of the former SFRY. The Civil Society Forum is also taking part in the Berlin Process, and is also proposing the signing of the Agreement on the Establishment of RECOM at the summit in 2018.