If a person is identified, what happens after? - Total Incident Ecology of Deaths and Disappearances on the Balkan Route.

What happens after someone dies or disappears on the Balkan route?

This article is part of Dead and Missing, a four-part series previewing Collective Aid’s forthcoming report, Total Incident Ecology of Deaths and Disappearances on the Balkan Route.

Covering Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro, the report examines deaths and disappearances documented between 2020 and July 2026. It follows what comes after: recovery, identification, family notification, burial and the long-term traceability of a grave, including the cases where a person remains unidentified and their family never receives an answer.

Each article explores one part of that chain, offering a first look at the research ahead of the full report’s release in November.

Part 2 of the Dead and Missing teaser series

The call is not the starting point

A body can be found, examined and buried without anyone establishing a name. To the family, the person may still be missing. To the institution arranging burial, they may already be an unidentified deceased person. Those two accounts do not necessarily meet.

The first article followed the body after recovery. This one moves towards the people searching, but it cannot begin with a call as though notification routinely follows. It begins with an “if”: if information about an unidentified person reaches someone who can recognise them, what happens next?

A name on a document is not always enough. A missing-person report does not automatically lead to a comparison with unidentified remains. A family can have photographs, personal details and an account of where contact stopped without knowing which office holds the information that might answer them.

First, someone has to connect the records

Names can change as they move between languages and institutions. Arabic names may be written in Latin or Cyrillic script using different spellings. A surname can be shortened, a birth date entered incorrectly, or a person recorded under a name they used to protect themselves during the journey. Reporting on searches along the Balkan route shows how these differences can prevent records from matching.

That is not a problem a family can solve simply by spelling a name more carefully. The search needs a way to connect names with photographs, physical descriptions, personal belongings and the circumstances in which someone disappeared. Otherwise, useful information can exist in different files without ever becoming an identification.

Then, the family has to enter the process

In Bulgaria, guidance for relatives searching for a missing person advises contacting police, prosecutors and forensic services with photographs, biographical details, the last known location and proof of relationship. It states that identification and release from the morgue can be completed “only in person by a close relative”.

“In person” means more than reaching a desk. A relative abroad may need a passport, a visa, money for travel and accommodation, and documents proving the relationship. The person able to travel may be a cousin or friend rather than the relative the procedure accepts. Someone who knows the person well may still be unable to complete the formal process.

On Lesvos, interviewees described a similar dependence on who was present. A first-degree relative travelling with the deceased could help establish identity and claim the body. Where only friends or cousins were present, community members might need to locate an eligible relative abroad and help them reach the island.

These requirements operate against another timetable: the timetable for burial. In one Bulgarian case documented in reporting on unmarked graves, a father travelled from Denmark to search for his son and learned that he had already been buried four days after his body was found. Reaching the country did not mean reaching the process before decisions were made.

A sample on one side of a border

DNA identification requires a comparison. A sample from the body may need to be matched with a sample from a relative. Collecting both is not enough unless they can reach the right laboratory through an accepted procedure.

A case documents an Afghan man whose body was recovered on the Croatian side of the Sava while his surviving brother remained in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The brother could not enter Croatia to provide a sample. According to the account gathered for the report, restrictions on collecting a sample in Bosnia and Herzegovina prevented him from using the police channel required by Croatian authorities.

Identification was eventually achieved after an uncle living in Europe travelled to Croatia and repeatedly contacted the institutions involved. The surviving brother was nearby and willing to cooperate. What he lacked was an accessible route through the procedure. The border separated him not only from the body, but from the means of confirming who it was.

Evidence does not make its own connection

Croatia has forensic capacity, and a study of 125 deceased people recovered between 2015 and 2024 documents the use of visual recognition, DNA and fingerprints in identification. But a laboratory cannot compare a family sample that relatives have no way to submit. Technical capacity and practical access are different things.

Bosnia and Herzegovina presents a related gap. Biological samples retained after recovery from the Drina, while profiling and comparison can depend on a family coming forward or an intermediary helping initiate the process. A retained sample preserves a possibility. It does not ensure anyone will find the people needed to use it.

Local contacts, translators and organisations often bridge these gaps. They help a family establish where to inquire, explain documents and pursue a response. Their involvement can make identification possible. It also means that access can depend on whether someone has the time, language skills and institutional contacts to keep a case moving.

And if no one can come forward?

A procedure built around an active relative leaves another question unanswered: what happens where no family knows to search, or no one can travel, provide documents or obtain an accepted sample?

The person may remain unidentified. Burial may happen while relatives continue trying to establish whether they are alive, detained, injured or dead. An NN marker—name unknown—records that someone is buried there, but does not connect that person to those looking for them.

This is why the family who receives confirmation cannot stand for everyone. Some cases reach identification only after sustained intervention. Others never reach it. Finding a body, recording a death and informing relatives are separate actions, and there is no dependable chain guaranteeing that one leads to the next across the countries examined.

Dead and Missing: Total Incident Ecology of Deaths and Disappearances on the Balkan Route, released in November, follows those breaks in the chain. It documents what families are asked to do, which institutions hold the evidence, and what remains unresolved when they cannot reach one another.

And if a family does obtain an answer and reach the place where their relative is, another question begins: what happens after?

Words by Anna Gruber, Advocacy Manager