THE SEARCH FOR PEOPLE MISSING ON THE BALKAN ROUTE.
In the Bihać city cemetery is a row of freshly dug graves. Under the green wooden grave markers lie the bodies of unidentified people who died in this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina near the Croatian border. The grave markers bear only the most minimal identifiers — N.N.1, N.N.2, N.N.3…
Nomen Nescio in Latin denotes an unnamed person: This is how the dream of a better life, and the trials of a difficult journey toward the EU have come to an end in the Bihać cemetery.
And not only in Bihać — wherever people on the move die, it seems they are buried in forgotten plots of small cemeteries, and their graves are often left without a name. When searches are organized by families, volunteers or religious officials, all too often this is where the trail runs out.
Each year, thousands of people go missing in an attempt to reach Europe. There is no reliable statistical data on missing persons but according to International Organization for Migration (IOM) data on the Missing Migrants page, 1,861 migrants have so far perished throughout the world in 2020.
In 2017, Bosnia started recording more arrivals. According to Bosnian Service for Foreigners’ Affairs data, from 2018 until the start of September this year, almost 60,000 displaced people have entered the country. Of that number, half arrived last year, but numbers have dwindled since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
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