BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) - Amnesty International is urging Balkan states to investigate the fate of some 14,000 people still missing from the region's conflicts of the 1990s, and for those responsible for their disappearance to be punished.
The group said in statement Wednesday - ahead of the International Day of the Disappeared on Thursday - that "people living in the Balkans have not closed the chapter of enforced disappearances."
Jezerca Tigani, Europe and Central Asia deputy program director, said "the governments must ensure that all victims and their families have access to justice and receive, without further delay, adequate and effective reparation for the harm they have suffered."
The statement also charged Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo with failing "to abide by their international legal obligations to effectively investigate and prosecute those crimes."
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