In the village of Ternje in southern Kosovo, Bekim Gashi lives with an emptiness no grave can fill. He keeps only photographs of his mother, Hyra, and his four sisters, who vanished after a massacre by the Serbian army on March 25, 1999. “My mother and sisters were killed on that day. For 26 years, I have not known where their bodies are buried. Every time I see a pit, I think they might be lying there,” he says.
When the Kosovo War officially ended in June 1999, authorities estimated about 4,600 people were missing. Many cases have since been resolved, but roughly 1,600 families still wait without closure. Most of the missing are Kosovo Albanians — about 1,100 — while roughly 500 are Serbs, Roma or members of other minorities. The unresolved fate of those missing remains one of the deepest wounds of the post-war period, a human, political and moral tragedy that existing agreements have not settled.
The Gashi family originally had 22 relatives recorded as missing; the fate of 14 is still unknown. Bekim and other relatives took part in exhumations and pursued years of legal proceedings in Belgrade, but these efforts produced no clear answers. “We went to Belgrade in the hope of getting information. The process took six years. In the end, there was no result,” he says.
A sign of renewed hope arrived in early 2026. For the first time, representatives of the Serbian and Kosovar state commissions for missing persons met in Shkodra, northern Albania, on February 4, 2026, to talk about concrete steps. That meeting followed a preliminary agreement reached in Brussels on January 22 to form a trilateral commission involving Kosovo, Serbia and the EU. It also built on a May 2023 Kosovo-Serbia joint declaration in which both governments promised to cooperate to clarify the fate of the missing as part of EU-led normalization talks.
Participants in Shkodra included Kosovo officials Andin Hoti and Kushtrim Gara and Serbia’s Veljko Odalovic. The Kosovar NGO Zeri i Prinderve (The Voice of Parents), which searches for missing people and supports relatives, sent Xhyle Haziri, who described the talks as taking place in a positive atmosphere and “without negative words.” Haziri said the Serbian side had often been the biggest obstacle, repeatedly delaying meetings and proceedings, but welcomed that a joint meeting had finally taken place after three years. “There are promises that more intensive work will be done in March and that a new meeting will take place,” she said. “I have more hope now than before. Because everyone agreed that the issue of the missing persons must be resolved once and for all.”
Not everyone shares that optimism. Klisman Kadiu, adviser to Kosovo’s deputy prime minister, warned that progress since the May 2023 declaration has been minimal, largely because Serbia has not substantially cooperated. “Without political will, no solution will be reached,” he said, pointing to a lack of transparency and refusal to open state archives as key shortcomings that have prolonged families’ suffering.
Bekim Gashi remains skeptical. He believes the truth lies in Serbia. “Serbia took the bodies away. Serbia knows where they are. We are not asking for miracles. We just want the remains and a place where we can go to lay flowers,” he says. During court proceedings in Serbia, documents from the 549th Brigade of the former Yugoslav People’s Army — daily and monthly mission reports — surfaced repeatedly. “If the files of this brigade were opened up, everything would be there,” Gashi says, noting such information is not available in Kosovo.
He also criticizes the lack of institutional support and divisions within organizations of relatives of the missing in Kosovo. “We don’t feel well represented. We are invited to meetings, but rarely. We are not part of the decision-making process,” he says, reiterating the families’ central demand: a place to remember and a grave where they can lay flowers.
For roughly 1,600 families, the war is not over. They continue to wait — for answers, for remains, for a place to mourn.
This article was originally published in German.