Formation 1994 Headquarters Sarajevo Chair Mirsad Tokaca | Type NGO Location Bosnia and Herzegovina | |
The Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo (RDC) was an institution based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, partly funded by the Norwegian government that aimed to gather facts, documents, and data on genocide, war crimes, and human rights violations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It described itself as an independent, non-governmental, non-profit, professional and nonpartisan institution. RDC investigated issues regardless of the ethnic, political, religious, social, or racial affiliation of the victims.
The Center was made up of independent members, intellectuals and professionals from different academic disciplines. All of RDC's documents (witness statements, photo and video material, etc.) have been made available to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, as well as to the Bosnian courts, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), scientific institutions and the media.
The Bosnian Book of Dead
In January 2013, the RDC published its final research on Bosnia-Herzegovina's war casualties, titled The Bosnian Book of the Dead. This database includes 97,207 confirmed names of Bosnia and Herzegovina's citizens, killed during the 1992–1995 war, with an additional 5,100 unconfirmed names. An international team of experts evaluated the findings before they were released. The head of the ICTY Demographic Unit, Ewa Tabeu, called it "the largest existing database on Bosnian war victims".
Of the 97,207 casualties documented by 2013:
The percentage of civilian victims would probably have been higher had survivors not reported their loved-ones as "soldiers" to access social services and other post-mortem benefits.