The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination of the United Nations (Committee) adopted the Concluding Observations on the combined II-V periodic report of the Republic of Serbia on the implementation of the International  Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD/C/SR.2604), at its 2604th session held on 1 December 2017. Previously, in cooperation with the organisations SKRUG, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, European Network on Statelessness and European Roma Rights Centre, Praxis submitted to the Committee a written contribution related to the outstanding problems concerning the prevention of racial discrimination in Serbia, with a focus on hate crimes and discrimination against members of the Roma national minority and stateless persons as a particularly vulnerable group of foreigners.

Referring to the allegations from the written contribution submitted by Praxis and partner organisations, the Committee was concerned by indications that hate speech remained under-reported and by the absence of comprehensive statistics on investigations, prosecutions and convictions for acts of racist hate speech and incitement to racial hatred. The Committee advised Serbia to pursue its efforts to enforce Article 54a of the Criminal Code, notably by ensuring that all reported incidents, investigations, prosecutions,sanctions and remedies relating to racist hate crimes were recorded. The sanctions imposed on perpetrators should be commensurate with the gravity of racist hate crimes, while victims should obtain full redress. It was also recommended to designate within law enforcement services contact persons for racist incidents, provide training to them on conducting investigations, and ensure they engaged in regular dialogue with targeted groups in order to ensure adequate reporting of racist hate crimes. The Committee requested from Serbia to provide detailed statistics, disaggregated by ethnicity, on the number and nature of racist hate crimes reported, prosecutions and convictions, and redress provided to victims. The Committee also requests statistics on the number of such cases that were still pending at the Public Prosecutor’s Office and before the courts.

The Committee urged Serbia to put an end to de facto public school segregation ofRoma children and ensure access to quality education for Roma children, including through anti-racism and human rights training for school staff, awareness-raising efforts targeting parents, and increased employment of Roma teachers.  The Committee also recommended that the State party took measures to avoid the so-called “white flight” from schools where Roma were enrolled, including by developing effective mechanisms with a view to preventing further de facto segregation in schools.  The Committee further recommended that Serbia enshrined the desegregation of schooling in its national policies to ensure its sustainability, and provided adequate funding for its implementation, in line with Sustainable Development Goal on ensuring that by 2030, all girls and boys completed free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education. 

In addition, the Committee pointed to the problems of trafficking in persons, housing and status of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. The Committee recommended to Serbia to ensure that individuals with insufficient means to pay for legal representation had the legal right to free access to legal recourse for acts of racial discrimination. The Committee recommended to the State party to provide, free of charge, clear information to members of vulnerablegroups, in a language they understood, concerning their rights under the Conventionand complaint mechanisms for acts of racial discrimination. The Committee also recommended that Serbia continued to consult and engage in dialogue with civil society organisations concerned with human rights protection, in particular those working to combat racial discrimination, in thepreparation of the next periodic report and in follow-up to the present concluding observations. 

At the invitation of the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs and the Office for Cooperation with Civil Society of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, the Anti-Discrimination Coalition, with Praxis being one of its members, submitted remarks and suggestions relating to the latest Draft Law on Gender Equality. 

The general objection made by the members of the Anti-Discrimination Coalition referred to the almost complete absence of a gender identity component. In addition, the Law does not mention sexual orientation at all, which does not contribute to a greater compliance of this regulation with European standards. 

Gender-based discrimination is defined as "any differentiation or unequal treatment or failure to treat (exclusion, restriction or prioritising), in an open or covert manner, in relation to persons or groups of persons, as well as members of their families or close persons, based on gender or sex, in political, educational, economic, social, cultural, sports and other spheres of social life“. 

However, the definition of gender excludes gender identity, since according to the Draft Law "gender signifies socially determined roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that society finds appropriate for women and men.” In this way, transgender and intersex persons are excluded from the Law, as well as non-binary persons, and a dilemma arises as to who determines what is appropriate for society and in which way.

Regarding the definitions of discrimination and special measures for achieving equality, this Draft Law does not contain any shortcomings related to the compliance with the EU directives dealing with the protection from discrimination, which are included in the Law on Protection against Discrimination. In fact, the definition of indirect discrimination is fully harmonised with EU directives. Inciting discrimination is defined as a form of discriminatory act. Special measures for achieving and promoting gender equality are of a temporary character, since it is emphasised that "special measures are applied until the prescribed aim of their determination and implementation is achieved," which is in line with international standards.

As regards judicial protection in a civil procedure initiated by a person and a group of persons subjected to gender discrimination, the Law states that it is exercised in accordance with the law regulating the prohibition of discrimination. This provision seems to be adequate, since it does not "duplicate" the system of protection and does not call into question the civil society organisations’ standing to commence an action. The associations that have defined the activities of assistance and support to victims of violence within their programmes are allowed to provide free legal aid.

The members of the Anti-Discrimination Coalition are: Centre for the Advancement of Legal Studies  - CUPS, Civil Rights Defenders, Gayten-LGBT, Equality, Labris - Organisation for Lesbian Human Rights, Network of Committees for Human Rights in Serbia CHRIS, Association of Students with Disabilities and Praxis.  

Preliminary results of the survey on the participation of civil society organisations and citizens in the decision- and policy-making process, conducted by Praxis within the framework of the project Contributing to Public Administration Reform in Kraljevo, as part of the grant scheme of WeBER project financed by EU and co-financed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, show that there is almost no public participation in the process of adopting acts in Kraljevo.

In the period 1 June 2016 - 1 August 2017, the Kraljevo City Assembly adopted 399 acts. With the exception of planning documents, whose adoption must be transparent according to the Law on Planning and Construction, none of other 399 acts were adopted after an organised public hearing, nor were citizens or civil society organisations involved in any other way in drafting these acts.

The situation is different only in case of strategic documents, which was demonstrated also in the process of drafting and adopting the Local Action Plan for the Roma in the City of Kraljevo for the period 2017-2020. This document was adopted in September 2017 following the consultations with interested citizens and CSOs and a public hearing. It is very important that CSOs got involved already in the drafting phase because it allowed them to substantially influence the content of the future act.  All the proposals presented during the public hearing were adopted and there was also the option to send additional written comments.

Although the procedure of adopting this act can serve as an example of good practice and the way of conducting genuine consultations, it is an exception, limited to the procedures of adopting strategic acts. Most decisions are adopted without public participation.

Apart from leaving a negative impression of the level of the local self-government’s commitment to public administration reform, a failure to include CSOs is a missed opportunity to use their experience for improving the quality of adopted acts and preventing the adoption of incomplete, unconstitutional or discriminatory decisions.

WeBER (Western Balkans Enabling Project for Civil Society Monitoring of Public Administration Reform) is a three-year project financed by EU and co-financed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. More details about the project are available here. 

Media coverage: Ibarske novosti Weekl
                        RTVKV

The latest report of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), prepared within the framework of SIGMA programme for regular monitoring of all Western Balkan countries in the field of public administration reform, shows, based on the analysis of 2016 data, that Serbia has almost no progress in the field of public administration reform. There are stagnation and serious shortcomings in most areas, while in some aspects there is even regression. Certain progress has been recorded only in one out of the six areas of public administration reform, which is the area of service delivery. Serbia was commended by Sigma for the Stop to Bureaucracy Action Plan, the service “Baby, Welcome to the World”, the digital service system for vehicle licenses, and further improvement of the procedures for starting a business. However, the situation is rather unfavourable in the area of quality control and assurance because there are no common standards or service user feedback mechanism.

In fact, whether we talk about planning and preparing public policies or about the degree of public administration professionalism or about the way of informing the public about its work and involving citizens in decision-making process, many indicators show that Serbia is at the lower level than other countries in the region, especially compared to the neighbouring Albania and Montenegro.

Publishing of SIGMA/OECD 2017 report was also the occasion for launching, within WeBER project, the previously announced tool for monitoring the performance in the Western Balkan countries in the field of public administration reform – PAR Scoreboard. 

PAR Scoreboard shows the results for all Western Balkan countries in an interactive way, allows their filtering by public administration principles and shows the criteria measured by two groups of indicators: 

1. those developed through SIGMA/OECD methodology; 

2. those developed through WeBER PAR Monitor Methodology. 

More information about the possibilities provided by PAR Scoreboard is available here.

Media coverage: TV N1

Praxis participated in the second meeting of the National Working Group (NWG) for Monitoring Public Administration Reform (PAR) in Serbia held in Belgrade on 26 October 2017.

As an introduction to the NWG meeting, a workshop was held for representatives of civil society organisations (CSOs) implementing research projects within the framework of WeBER Small Grants Programme, during which they exchanged their experiences of the previous implementation of these projects and presented research progress and findings related to PAR monitoring at the local level.

Milijana Trifković from Praxis and Danijela Jović from Centre for Balanced Regional Development – Cen TriR spoke on behalf of the CSO recipients of small grants for PAR monitoring at the local level. The former presented the first findings of research on transparency of local self-government bodies and implementation of the new Law on Administrative Procedure in the City of Kraljevo, while the latter presented the findings of the current employment practice, the impact in the field of human resource management, as well as the civil society’s views of these issues in Užice, Požega and Gornji Milanovac.

The NWG is a national consultative mechanism for dialogue between the civil society and relevant public authorities on the design and monitoring of the PAR process in the Western Balkan countries. The National Working Groups have been established in each of these countries as part of a wider WeBER platform. More details about the NWG in Serbia are available here.

WeBER (Western Balkans Enabling Project for Civil Society Monitoring of Public Administration Reform) is a three-year project financed by EU and co-financed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. More details about the project are available here.

On 13 December 2017, Praxis held a conference „STOP to Child Marriages and Statelessness“, accompanied by the exhibition of children’s drawings on the topic of prevention and elimination of child marriages. The conference was attended by more than 100 people including a large number of the authors of presented drawings. 

The conference was opened by Ivanka Kostić, Praxis’ Executive Director, who welcomed the attendees and gave a brief overview of the activities implemented by Praxis in the field of preventing statelessness and child marriages with the financial support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The attendees were then addressed by Hans Friedrich Schodder, the UNHCR chief in Serbia, who pointed out that child marriages aggravated the problem of statelessness, constituted a violation of human rights and increased the risk of violence and abuse. He also expressed his satisfaction for continuing the cooperation with Praxis and his expectation that a common goal would be achieved, i.e. that every child in Serbia would be registered in birth registry books.

Milan Radojev, Praxis’ Status and Socioeconomic Rights Programme Coordinator, presented the results achieved over the past years in the field of preventing statelessness and exercising the right to registration into civil registry books. He pointed to the fact that after many years of neglecting the problem of legally invisible persons by the competent authorities, a significant progress had been made in this field since 2012.  In this regard, he particularly stressed the importance of amendments to the relevant legislation and established cooperation among stakeholders in resolving the problem, which resulted in the fact that a significant number of people obtained personal documents for the first time in their lives. Nevertheless, he emphasised that the problem of legally invisible persons in Serbia had not been fully resolved and that it was necessary to amend the by-laws that kept preventing children whose mothers did not possess personal documents from being registered at birth.

Jelena Petrović, Praxis’ Child Rights Programme Coordinator, briefly presented the activities implemented by Praxis for the third consecutive year in the field of prevention and elimination of child marriages. She focused on the activities aimed at preventing and eliminating child marriages and targeting school children, which were implemented by Praxis in 2017. Discussing about why some children dropped out of school, what marital duties were and why child marriages should be prevented, the children were empowered to continue their education and thus stand against child marriages. The children gave their answers in the form of drawings, some of which were presented in the exhibition that the conference attendees had the opportunity to see. Jelena also presented the leaflet „STOP to Child Marriages“, which summarised the experiences acquired by Praxis while working on the prevention and elimination of child marriages, included recommendations for further work and presented some of the children's drawings created in the workshops with more than 140 boys and girls from four primary schools in Serbia.

At the very end, Jasmina Miković, Praxis’ Deputy Executive Director, presented two girls from the Primary School "Jovan Cvijić" from Kostolac and their Roma language teacher, who took part in Praxis’ workshops on the prevention and elimination of child marriages. One of the girls presented her impressions from the workshops and said that it was not good for children to marry early and that it was very important for them to complete education. 

Finally, the conference attendees, including the authors of drawings and their teachers, had the opportunity to view the exhibition and socialise.

Radio Belgrade I broadcast on the conference here.