Resolving the Issue of Missing Persons from the Communist Era in Albania
- The Institute of the Formerly Politically Persecuted
- The Institute of Forensic Medicine
- The Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Albania
July 2017 - December 2019
Overall Objective
The objective of the project is to develop the capacities of the Albanian authorities to address 6,000 cases of missing persons from the Communist era.
Summary of the Project
The project aimed to determine the needs and constraints of implementing a full-scale process of exhumation and identification of missing persons from the Communist era in Albania. It also obtained results in terms of DNA-led identifications from two pilot sites (Dajti and Balsh), in order for the Albanian authorities to fulfil their obligations to the families of the missing.
Another objective of the project was to strengthen the capacity of the Albanian institutions, namely the Institute of the Formerly Politically Persecuted, the Institute of Forensic Medicine and the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Albania, to account for missing persons from the Communist era in Albania.
Activities
- Conducting assessments to determine the requirements for excavation, recovery and identification operations regarding missing persons
- Creation of records of the missing persons, including information on disappearance events and grave locations
- Building investigative and legal organisation capacities, including adequate data protection regimes
- Conducting training and mentoring activities to achieve the project objectives
- Collection of ante-mortem data on the missing persons and genetic samples from family members; DNA testing of post-mortem samples to match DNA provided by family members of the missing persons
Expected Results
- Data gathered on missing persons, families of the missing, locations of burial/exhumation and the processing of post-mortem samples, related to the Dajti and Balsh sites
- Needs assessment report underlining the requirements for excavation, recovery and identification operations regarding missing persons
- Staff within the Department on Missing Persons within the Institute of the Formerly Politically Persecuted trained in the collection of ante-mortem data and the collection of genetic reference samples from family members
- Albanian pathologists within the Institute of Forensic Medicine trained in taking post-mortem samples from human remains
