Dubrovnik, 22-23 March 2019

Civil Rights Defenders and the AIRE Centre (Advice on Individual Rights in Europe) organised the Sixth Regional Rule of Law Forum for South East Europe. The Forum gathered over 170 participants from Albania, BiH, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey and Hungary, including presidents and judges of supreme and constitutional courts, members of judicial councils, directors of judicial academies, representatives of NGOs and prominent legal experts in the field, as well as nine current and former judges of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. As a representative of NGO Praxis, Jasmina Miković, Deputy Executive Director took part in the Forum.

The aim of the Forum was to promote the implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights at the domestic level, to encourage regional cooperation in the continued development of the rule of law and the protection of human rights, and to assist the process of EU integration across the region.

The topic of the 2019 Forum was child rights, focusing on the protection of children as an integral and essential part of the rule of law and marking 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Children are amongst the most vulnerable members of our societies and the protection of their rights is of fundamental importance to the rule of law. The topics forming the basis of the Forum discussions included domestic violence (with children as victims and witnesses), human trafficking, asylum, migration, custody and care of children, and access to justice for children.

Goran Miletić from Civil Rights Defenders explained at the Forum: “We decided to organise the first Forum as a means to enhance dialogue, debate, as well as cooperation between judiciaries, legal professionals and civil society organisations across the region. By sharing best practises we hope to improve the implementation of human rights standards across the region. The Sixth Regional Rule of Law Forum for South East Europe will be dedicated to children’s rights. This topic, which has been emphasised as an issue of fundamental importance and relevance was chosen after consultations with judiciaries and relevant stakeholders throughout the region and in Strasbourg.”

The Vice President of the European Court of Human Rights, Judge Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos, stated: “The best interests of the child is a key notion in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. It is used in a broad range of cases concerning not only family law (adoption, visitation rights, guardianship, international abduction of children, surrogate motherhood) but also in relation to other issues like detention of children, retention of migrant children, etc. The Court has developed a series of factors to be taken into account in order to better evaluate the best interests of the child on a case-by-case basis.”

During the Forum, Biljana Braithwaite, AIRE Centre Western Balkans Programme Manager said: “All the jurisdictions represented in this room today have the ECHR as part of their legal order, and everyone would agree that the protection of children is an essential and integral part of the rule of law. However, the legal protection of children under the Convention is not, in and of itself, sufficient to meet the obligations imposed by it. Notwithstanding the existence of such protection in the legal systems of the Council of Europe’s member states there have been many violations of the rights of children, who continue to suffer from, amongst other things, domestic violence, human trafficking and discrimination. It is important that the promotion and protection of their rights is practical and effective and does not remain theoretical and illusory. There is still work to be done to secure the full implementation of the rights of the child in practice, and we all have a role to play.”

An updated and expanded country profile on Serbia as part of the Statelessness Index has been launched today. The Serbia page now includes up-to-date data on new categories like withdrawal of nationality, reduction of statelessness, and bilateral return and readmission agreements, as well as a shorter country briefing in English and Serbian, which outline recommendations for the Government on how to improve the treatment of stateless people and to prevent and reduce statelessness (also attached to this email).

The Index country profile on Serbia provides analysis for over 25 different categories. Law, policy and practice under each of these categories are assessed against international norms and good practice and marked with a clear and easy to understand assessment key. 

MAIN 2019 INDEX UPDATES

Serbia saw some positive legislative developments in 2018, but the update also highlights some continuing concerns with implementation in practice. 

In March 2018, Serbia adopted a new Law on Foreigners, which established a definition of a stateless person and introduces provisions on detention and return procedures that could improve the situation of some stateless people. Detention may now only be ordered after considering less coercive measures; removal can be postponed and access to basic rights granted if someone’s identity can’t be determined (through no fault of their own); and temporary residence can be granted on humanitarian grounds if removal is postponed for over a year. As a result, the assessment of Serbia’s performance in the Detention theme has slightly improved. 

However, there is also a provision in the new law that presumes that if someone can’t establish their identity or doesn’t have a travel document, they are obstructing removal, which undermines some of these positive changes. The Index update also shows that work remains to be done to bring Serbian law, policy and practice on the protection of stateless people and prevention and reduction of statelessness in line with international standards: Serbia still has no statelessness determination procedure; bylaws requiring parents to be documented to register births remain in force; and safeguards to prevent children being born stateless in the country are undermined by implementation gaps. 

ABOUT THE STATELESSNESS INDEX

The Statelessness Index is an online tool that assesses how countries in Europe protect stateless people and what they are doing to prevent and reduce statelessness. It is the first to provide comprehensive and accessible comparative analysis for 18 countries in Europe, including Serbia. It allows users to quickly understand which areas of law, policy and practice can be improved by states.

The Index was developed by the European Network on Statelessness (ENS), in partnership with Praxis. It is an invaluable tool for sharing good practice and raising awareness of issues that affect stateless people. 

We look forward to working with key stakeholders to facilitate the change needed to improve the lives of stateless men, women and children living in Serbia. 

In February 2019, Praxis continued providing assistance to refugees/migrants, through information, psychosocial support, referrals to the targeted assistance provided by various organisations/institutions or covering the costs of transport to the asylum and reception centres.

A total of 517 newly arrived refugees/migrants were informed about current situation in Serbia and the region, legal status and available legal options (seeking asylum in Serbia, assisted voluntary return to the country of origin, possibilities of family reunification abroad or resettlement to a third country when possible), accommodation in asylum centres (AC) or transit-reception centres in Serbia, means of transportation to the assigned centres, other rights and available services (medical care, psychosocial support, food, NFIs, various workshops for refugees/ migrants etc).

Download the whole Protection Monitoring Report for February 2019 here.

The Anti-Discrimination Coalition and partner organizations demand from the competent authorities to withdraw from the adoption procedure the proposed Amending Act on the Anti-discrimination Law because representatives of vulnerable and discriminated groups, as well as the general public, had no opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed legal solutions. The text of the draft Act has an extremely large number of shortcomings; therefore, it is necessary to postpone its adoption and enable all stakeholders to provide their respective feedback.

The Government of the Republic of Serbia has recently prepared a proposed Amending Act on the Anti-discrimination Law. Contrary to the legal rules governing the drafting and adoption procedure of draft laws, the parties interested in the content of the Act were not allowed to participate in its drafting, nor was a public discussion on the proposed solutions held before the Government formally adopted them. This is also stated in item 9. Analysis of the effects of the Act that was submitted to the National Assembly along with the proposed Amending Act.

The lack of a wide debate on the new legal solutions directly prevented interested parties from making a constructive contribution to the quality of the proposed Act, and above all,  from contributing to the elimination of its numerous shortcomings, which can be divided into four different groups.

The first group consists of shortcomings which are linguistically meaningless or impossible linguistic structures, but also of spelling mistakes. For example, the text uses the word "doesnotjustify" (translator’s note: the whole phrase is written as one word) and states that "harassment...which is aimed at or constitutes a violation of dignity... is forbidden" (translator’s note: in the original, an impossible language structure is used). 

The second group of shortcomings indicates that the amendments are not proposed in accordance with the law drafting rules. For example, in a contradictory manner, the act authorizes the Commissioner to process names and other personal data of the parties in the ongoing court discrimination-related proceedings, but at the same time imposes the obligation to anonymize those data before the submission of the court judgments to the Commissioner.

The third group consists of legal and systemic shortcomings that prevent the adequate implementation of the Act, such as deleting general procedural guarantees pertaining to the complaint proceedings, thus jeopardizing the rights of the parties in the proceedings and paving the way for arbitrary decision-making on the part of the Commissioner. 

Finally, the fourth group of shortcomings are of legal and political nature and cast doubt on the actual intent of the author of the proposed amendments, such as the authorization of the Commissioner to decide not to act upon a complaint if he/she finds that the purpose of the proceedings can be achieved by issuing a public warning, or the introduction of misdemeanor fines ten times higher than the currently prescribed ones, without any reasoning behind it.

Since the number of these shortcomings exceeds the number of proposed amendments, and especially taking into account the fact that their adoption would significantly aggravate the status of the parties concerned with this Act, we consider it necessary to withdraw the proposed Act for adoption without any delay, and then enable all interested parties to participate in the improvement of the legal text at hand.

The Anti-Discrimination Coalition consists of the Center for the Advancement of Legal Studies, Civil Rights Defenders, Labris -Organization for Lesbian Human Rights, the Network of Human Rights Committees (CHRIS Network), the Association of Disabled Students, Gayten LGBT, Praxis and the Equality.

The list of organisations supporting the initiative can be downloaded here.

At the initiative of UNICEF and the Coordination Body for Gender Equality, the National Coalition to End Child Marriage was established with the aim of contributing to ending child marriages in Serbia by eliminating institutional and social barriers to law enforcement and promoting good practice of partnership between local communities, the media, non-governmental, governmental and private sectors. At the same time, the Coalition should work on safe choice options for Roma girls and on empowering Roma boys and girls to change the existing harmful practices.

The first founding meeting of the Coalition was held on 21 February 2019 in the building of the Government of the Republic of Serbia. On this occasion, UNICEF Representative in Serbia Regina De Dominicis pointed out that early and child marriages constituted a serious violation of the rights of girls, who were more at risk from this phenomenon.

"The story of every early married girl I met is full of pain and regret. Tradition is not harmful in itself, but the question is how society perceives this tradition and how it stimulates stereotypes. One of the most important aspects of child protection is precisely prevention of child marriages", said De Dominicis.

Assistant Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, Jovana Atanacković, noted that marriage before the age of 18 was a serious violation of human rights and affected the girls' right to health, education and life without violence.

"Therefore, we are establishing the National Coalition in order to contribute, through our joint efforts, to creating intervention models, empowering young Roma women to get educated, strengthening local Roma communities and establishing better coordination at all levels in order to eradicate child marriages," said Atanacković.

Silvija Nešić, a representative of NGO Ternipe, stressed that no Roma woman had a future without support.

"Therefore, UNICEF's support is extremely important for us, Roma organisations. Support and cooperation are the only way of fighting", said Silvija.

The Coalition represents a community of individuals, institutions and organisations, including representatives of the Coordination Body for Gender Equality, UNICEF, the Office for Human and Minority Rights, the Administrative Districts of Nišava, Jablanica and South Banat, the Committee on Human and Minority Rights and Gender Equality and the Committee on the Rights of the Child of the National Assembly. The members of the Coalition are also representatives of the Protector of Citizens, the Commissioner for Protection of Equality, the City of Belgrade, civil society organisations Bibija, Ternipe, Praxis, Indigo, the Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Team, the Roma Inclusion Office, the Association of Roma Novi Bečej, the Republic Institute for Social Protection and UN agencies.

Throughout December 2018 and January 2019, Praxis continued providing assistance to refugees/migrants, through information, psychosocial support, referrals to the targeted assistance provided by various organisations/institutions or covering the costs of transport to the asylum and reception centres.

A total of 1352 newly arrived refugees/migrants were informed about current situation in Serbia and the region, legal status and available legal options (seeking asylum in Serbia, assisted voluntary return to the country of origin, possibilities of family reunification abroad or resettlement to a third country when possible), accommodation in asylum centres (AC) or transit-reception centres in Serbia, means of transportation to the assigned centres, other rights and available services (medical care, psychosocial support, food, NFIs, various workshops for refugees/ migrants etc).

Download the whole Protection Monitoring Report for December 2018 here.

Download the whole Protection Monitoring Report for January 2019 here.