A Book of Memories Helps Face the Past

Together with Humanitarian Law Centre in Kosovo, Civil Rights Defenders is compiling the Kosovo Memory Book, a comprehensive record of killed and missing persons during the 1998-2000 armed conflict in Kosovo. The aim is to build a historical memory about the conflict that will assist the Kosovar society to deal with the recent past.

Kosovo Memory Book may be used by national war crimes chambers and other state bodies in the prosecution of perpetrators.

By collecting the stories of victims and their families and publicize them in a book we hope to prevent future historical revisionism and political manipulation of the numbers of killed and forcibly disappeared. At the same time the project can restore dignity to the victims and their families.

We also have the ambition to improve compliance with human rights obligations and accountability of duty holders by creating the conditions for state-sponsored truth-telling processes and reparation programmes.

The first volume of the book (covering incidents from 1998) was discussed at our breakfast seminar in September 2011. Final research and preparations for publication of Volume two (covering citizens that lost their lives during 1999) will be undertaken during 2011 and 2012.