Whilst the authorities and institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina have the prime responsibility to clarify the fate of missing persons in the country and to support their families, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in accordance with its mandate and as stipulated in annex seven of the Dayton Peace Agreement, is committed to clarifying the fate of all persons remaining unaccounted for. The work of the ICRC is focused on endeavours to secure the cooperation of authorities in locating and identifying missing persons and support their families.

More than 22,000 persons have been reported to the ICRC as missing during the hostilities, of which around 11,000 persons are still unaccounted for and are listed by the ICRC. More than 11,000 cases have been solved since 1995, majority through DNA matching procedures and identification process run by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in cooperation with the BiH authorities. The ICRC, in cooperation with the Red Cross Society of BiH and National Red Cross Societies abroad, have contributed to that exercise through a handover of collected ante mortem data on missing persons to the Missing Persons Institute of BiH (MPI) for further use. The MPI is a unified institution at the State level, tasked with pursuing cases of missing persons regardless of their ethnicity, religious affiliation or gender. The ICRC supports, in cooperation with the ICMP, effective functioning of the MPI, in particular in relation to the set up of the Central Records on Missing Persons in BiH.

The right to know the fate of a missing relative is a fundamental concern of international humanitarian law and human rights law and it must be upheld and respected. The question of persons unaccounted for remains a crucial reconciliation issue in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the region as a whole.