Data Base
Database on War Crimes and Human Rights Violations in the Past
The foundation of the HLC’s programme is the Database of War Crimes and Past Human Rights Violations (the Database), which enables data and documentation on war crimes and other serious human rights violations to be professionally organised, easily searched, and permanently preserved.
Content
The Database contains systematically collected and verified data on persons who were killed, went missing, or were victims of other serious human rights violations during the armed conflicts in Yugoslavia. It is unique in that it provides both quantitative data and contextual information on the individual fates of war crimes victims and members of armed formations who were killed in combat.
The Database contains 144,369 documents on 25,000 victims and 3,000 perpetrators of war crimes. It includes:
• 2,600 statements by victims of police repression in Kosovo and Sandžak prior to March 1999;
• data on 1,930 citizens of Serbia and Montenegro, members of the armed forces and police, who were killed in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina;
• 42,819 documents concerning 13,625 persons killed or missing in connection with the war in Kosovo.
The Database also preserves photographs of victims, mass graves, execution sites, memorials, monuments, and gravestones. Evidence presented in trials before the ICTY is also entered into and analysed within the Database. To date, more than 6,133 such documents have been entered.
In addition, the HLC stores in the Database court documentation from war crimes trials throughout the region, as well as documentation from all earlier proceedings in which HLC lawyers represented victims. The Database also contains reports by international and domestic governmental and non-governmental organisations, foreign and domestic institutions and bodies, a media archive, and numerous other documents.
Data on Victims, Combatants, and Perpetrators
Through analysis of the documentation contained in the HLC Database, individual files have been created for 25,659 victims of war crimes and other human rights violations, as well as members of military and police forces and volunteer units from across the former Yugoslavia who lost their lives in combat. The files contain personal and family information, data on the date and place of death or disappearance, burial information, information on perpetrators, and other relevant details. Each individual file is linked to all documents and sources containing information about that person.
The largest group consists of files on persons killed, missing, or otherwise deceased in Kosovo between 1998 and 2000 — more than 13,000. The Database also contains files on approximately 2,000 citizens of Serbia and Montenegro who were killed, went missing, or otherwise lost their lives in the wars in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It further contains files on several thousand citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia who were killed, went missing, or otherwise lost their lives in the wars from 1991 to 1995, as well as more than 8,000 files on victims of other violations of international humanitarian law, including forcible transfer, deportation, unlawful detention, torture, and other abuses.
The Database also contains more than 1,500 files on possible perpetrators of war crimes and other human rights violations.