Instruments for documenting: research of human loses in Croatia

-In the 1990s wars on the territory of former Yugoslavia, some 130.000 were killed and almost 20.000 people went missing

-In Croatia, estimates are that there is from 17.000 to 20.000 killed and missing.

-Today there are more than 1.600 missing persons

-Documenta started research on human losses in Croatia in 2009.

-The main reason was that almost 15 years after the war in Croatia ended, there was still no unique, publicly accessible and verifiable list of Croatian citizens who were either killed or went missing during the war

- That enables ideological and political manipulation with the number of victims and does not contribute to easing the effects of the war nor does it enable opening of the space for building trust and sustainable peace

Aproaches to the research

• There are several main approaches depending on a few important factors:

in which time period is a research being conducted (in relation to the end of a war/armed conflict)

what is the estimated number of victims of war/armed conflict

what is the security situation in the area where the research is being conducted (is there a possibility of a relative safety of field research)

what is the goal of the research

• Complexity of the questionnaire/ How many information to gather?

Protection of researchers

• secondary traumatization

• psychological help/ periodical psychological evaluation

• two-member research teams

Field Research

• More than 6.000 interviews with the families of the victims

• Connection with the community

Data Base

• Different complexity

• More than 25.000 documents

Thank You!

• Slaven Rašković• slaven.raskovic@documenta.hr

• Documenta – Center for Dealing with the past• www.documenta.hr