- April 26, 2023

On 27 April 2023, at 20:30, we invite all citizens of Kosovo to turn off the lights in their homes for 5 minutes to mark the National Day of Missing People from the last war in Kosovo.
With five minutes of darkness in our homes, we will empathize with the pain and darkness in which the relatives of 1,621 missing persons are living for more than 20 years now. Turning off the lights has become a tradition, through which every year, on the same day, at the same time, together we will have the opportunity to remember the missing persons.
Even after more than two decades, family members of the missing persons are still searching and hoping for clarification of the fate of their loved ones, while waiting anxiously to find out the truth and commit to establishing justice for the crimes that have been committed against their family members.
Even today, we are witnessing institutional failure towards clarifying the issue of missing people. The right to know the truth is one of the basic principles of dealing with the past, so we urge the Government of Kosovo to seriously address the issue of missing persons in accordance with the rules of international humanitarian law. The main demand has been and remains the clarification of the missing persons fate.
We will continue to demand legal and moral responsibility from the Government of Kosovo to resolve the issue of missing persons and also from the Kosovar society, collective responsibility to continue to remember the missing persons because they are part of our society and inevitably part of dealing with the past and building peace.
This action is organized by Youth Initiative for Human Rights Kosovo, Missing Persons Resource Center, forum ZFD – Kosovo, Integra, Humanitarian Law Center, Program
#inthedarknessofthemissingpeople
