Initiative for RECOM

[2] On that occasion, it took care and responsibility to make a list of victims of the wars caused by the disintegration of SFR Yugoslavia.

As an extrajudicial body, RECOM should have been tasked with establishing the facts of all war crimes and other serious violations of human rights related to the war; to list all war-related victims by name and determine the circumstances of their death; to collect data on places of detention, on persons who are illegally detained, subjected to torture and inhumane treatment, as well as to make a comprehensive list of them; to collect information about the fate of the missing, as well as to hold public hearings of victims and other persons about wrongdoings related to the war.

The participants, representatives of around 300 non-governmental organizations and associations of families of missing persons and victims from post-Yugoslav countries, gave preference to a regional approach in dealing with the past.

: Коалицијата за РЕКОМ; Serbian: Коалиција за РЕКОМ), full name The Coalition for establishment of the Regional Commission for establishing facts about war crimes and other serious violations of human rights in the territory of the former SFR Yugoslavia from January 1, 1991, to December 31, 2001, is a network of non-governmental organization, which was formed on October 28, 2008, in Kosovo Capital City Pristina.

After the 4th Regional Forum for Transitional Justice in Post-Yugoslav Countries, the Research and Documentation Center withdrew from the Coordination Council and gave up further engagement and representation of the Initiative on the establishment of RECOM.

The letter was signed by, among others: Dino Merlin, Mirjana Karanović, Danis Tanović, Slavenka Drakulić, Slavko Goldstein, Jasmila Žbanić and others.

In just a few days, in May 2017, 52,919 citizens of Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Pristina, Zagreb and Belgrade signed a petition for an agreement between the leaders of the post-Yugoslav countries on the establishment of RECOM within the framework of the Berlin process.

In connection with the summit in London, which was held on July 10, 2018, the Coalition for RECOM invited the prime ministers of Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and North Macedonia to sign the Declaration on the establishment of RECOM and invite the remaining post-Yugoslav countries to join the joint job - making a list of human losses in the wars that resulted from the breakup of SFR Yugoslavia.

As part of preparations for the Berlin Process summit in 2019, Honorary Director General of the European Commission Pierre Mirel, on behalf of the EU Directorate for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, visited Sarajevo, and at meetings with advisers to the members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he was informed that members of the Presidency from the ranks of the Bosniak and the Croatian people believe that the establishment of RECOM is an outdated initiative, that the priorities for Bosnia and Herzegovina are regional stability and security, and that Republika Srpska does not support the reconciliation based on court facts, which the Coalition for RECOM advocates.

[11] Faced with the end of political support, the Assembly of the Coalition for RECOM on December 15, 2019, at its IX session in Zagreb, made a decision on the restructuring of the RECOM Initiative - by taking over the preparation of the regional list of victims (130,000), increasing research capacities through the inclusion of community colleges from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and securing appropriate financial resources.

At the session, it was decided that instead of the states, the RECOM Reconciliation Network takes care and responsibility of creating a name-by-name list of the victims of the wars that resulted from the breakup of the SFR Yugoslavia.

In a similar way, the head of the Team for coordinating the activities of the investigation of war crimes and the search for missing persons of the Republika Srpska, Staša Košarac, invaited citizens to boycott the signing of the petition for the establishment of RECOM, "the latest prank of the director of the Belgrade Humanitarian Law Center, Nataša Kandić", which, according to Košarac, at any cost, it wants to "completely implement the project of demonizing the Serbs" on the territory of the former SFR Yugoslavia.

And the Organization of Families of Captured and Killed Fighters and Missing Civilians of the Republika Srpska called on its members not to respond to the calls to collect one million signatures for the establishment of RECOM, because in their opinion "it is a calculated action that would once again brought the people to an unenviable position, because everything that should have been respected in the reconciliation of all peoples from this area was not respected, or at least in principle was thrown under the carpet".

According to him, it is first necessary to determine who caused the war, i.e. started the aggression in which the crimes were then committed, which is a request that is repeated in Serbia by Sonja Biserko, who believes that states should first establish national commissions, and sees the very idea of RECOM as imposed from outside.

The Coordination of Associations of the Families of the Disappeared issued a statement stating that it "opposes the campaign to collect signatures in some cities of the Republic of Kosovo and the region initiated by the Humanitarian Law Center.

[22] Since the founding of the Coalition in October 2008, six non-governmental organizations have resigned from the Coalition for RECOM: Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo, Buka Media Project from Banja Luka, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Republika Srpska from Bijeljina, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia from of Belgrade, Women's Association Izvor from Prijedor and Forum of Tuzla Citizens.

[26] The Initiative for RECOM is financially supported by: European Union (EU), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), Civil Rights Defenders (CRD), Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swiss Confederation and Comité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement (CCFD)-Terre Solidaire).