Database
Database on War Crimes and Past Human Rights Violations
The foundation of the HLC program is the Database on War Crimes and Past Human Rights Violations (Database), which enables the professional organization, easy search, and permanent preservation of data and documentation on war crimes and other serious human rights violations.
Content
Since its establishment in late 2004 until January 1, 2012, more than 40,000 documents have been entered into the Database. Over 16,000 of these documents were created through the documentation of war crimes and other human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, carried out by the HLC since its founding. Among the most valuable are witness statements—eyewitness accounts of war crimes and human rights violations, as well as testimonies from family members of victims and deceased or missing members of armed forces. To date, the HLC has collected over 11,400 witness statements. The majority of these statements concern war crimes and human rights violations in Kosovo (9,930), followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina (over 451 statements), Croatia (more than 470 statements), and Serbia (over 500 statements). Additionally, the HLC Database stores over 70 statements related to human rights violations in Slovenia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Albania.
The Database also contains photographs of victims, mass graves, execution sites, memorials, monuments, and tombstones. Evidence presented in trials before the ICTY is also entered and analyzed in the Database. So far, more than 6,133 such documents have been added. Additionally, the HLC stores judicial documentation from war crimes trials in the region, as well as documentation from all previous cases in which HLC lawyers represented victims. The Database also includes reports from international and domestic governmental and non-governmental organizations, foreign and domestic institutions, media archives, and various other documents.
Data on Victims, Combatants, and Perpetrators
Through the analysis of documentation in the HLC Database, dossiers have been created for 25,659 victims of war crimes and other human rights violations, as well as for members of military and police forces and volunteer units from across Yugoslavia who lost their lives in combat. These dossiers contain personal and family data, details about the date and place of death or disappearance, burial information, perpetrators, etc. Each individual dossier is linked to all documents and sources containing data about that person.
The most numerous dossiers are those of people killed, missing, or deceased in Kosovo between 1998 and 2000 (over 13,000), followed by Serbian and Montenegrin nationals killed, missing, or deceased in the wars in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (approximately 2,000). The Database also contains dossiers of several thousand Bosnian and Croatian nationals killed, missing, or deceased in the wars from 1991 to 1995, as well as over 8,000 dossiers of victims of other violations of international humanitarian law, such as forced displacement, deportation, unlawful detention, torture, and more. Additionally, the Database includes over 1,500 dossiers of potential perpetrators of war crimes and other human rights violations.