The agreement on the establishment of the State Institute for Missing Persons was signed by the head of the Mission of the International Commission for Missing Persons, Kathryn Bomberger, and Bosnian Minister for Human Rights and Refugees Mirsad Kebo.
Bomberger said that of 30,000 people who went missing in the country during the war between 15,000 and 20,000 were still listed as missing.
She said the establishment of the State Institute for Missing Persons was of historic importance for the country.
Kebo said that the Institute would look for missing people throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina regardless of their religion and ethnicity.
The former commission for missing persons from the Croat-Muslim entity searched mostly for Croats and Muslims, while the Serb entity commission searched for missing Serbs. The Brcko District department for missing persons had similar practice.
Speaking at a news conference in the northern town of Brcko, organised on the occasion of the International Day of the Disappeared, representatives of the association of the families of Muslims who were killed or went missing in Brcko District threatened to organise protest rallies if the town authorities failed to step up efforts to find the bodies of Muslims and Croats killed during the war.
Between 500 and 600 local Muslims and Croats were killed in Brcko during the war. So far, only one mass grave, containing the bodies of 66 people, has been discovered.