The non-governmental organisations call upon the legislative authorities to consider amending Article 85 of the Bill on Civil Procedure, which prevents the most vulnerable population to have access to court.

More precisely, this Bill envisages that citizens are allowed to take actions in the procedure either personally or through a representative who must be an attorney-at-law. Thus, the most vulnerable citizens of Serbia, who are physically disabled to access the court or lack financial resources to come to the court, will not be able to take these actions if they do not have the money to pay for the services of an attorney-at-law. Paragraph 2 of the said Article directly contradicts the constitutional guarantee that everyone shall have the right to an appeal or other legal remedy against any decision on his rights, obligations or lawful interests.  Given that the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia has not envisaged any restrictions, but has guaranteed that everyone has the right to a legal remedy, the proposed provision according to which an attorney-at-law must represent a party in the procedure, which is a legal remedy, directly violates the right to a legal remedy guaranteed under the Constitution and Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

In addition, we believe that in a situation where the Law on Free Legal Aid is still being drafted and the working group for drafting this law has not taken yet the final position on the potential providers of free legal aid, Article 85 predetermines that associations of citizens, trade unions, legal clinics at faculties and other potential providers of free legal aid will not be allowed to provide such services.  The result of this will be that the residents of informal settlements, persons with disabilities, internally displaced persons, victims of domestic violence and other categories of socially vulnerable citizens will virtually be left without access to court.
The constitutional provision stipulating that legal assistance shall be provided by legal professionals and legal assistance offices established in the units of local self-government refers to the level of protection of the right to legal assistance guaranteed by the state, and it may not be interpreted as the prohibition to other free legal aid providers to perform this activity. In addition to all the aforementioned, this provision violates Article 20, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, according to which the attained level of human and minority rights may not be lowered.

Taken all this into consideration, once again we call upon the competent state authorities to consider amending the aforementioned legal provision, which will, if adopted, prevent the most vulnerable and poorest citizens of Serbia to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to access to court.


The signatory organisations:
1.    Praxis
2.    CUPS (Centre of Advanced Legal Studies)
3.    Regional Center for Minorities
4.    Belgrade Center for Human Rights
5.    Humanitarian Law Center
6.    YUCOM - Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights
7.    Center for Practical Politics
8.    Network of the Committees for Human Rights in Serbia CHRIS
9.    Educational Roma Center
10.    ASTRA
11.    NGO Atina
12.    Civil Rights Defenders
13.    Association of Citizens Power of Friendship – Amity
14.    Novi Sad Humanitarian Center
15.    Sandzak Committee for Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms
16.    Humanitarian Center for Integration and Tolerance
17.    AS - Center for Empowerment of Young People Living with HIV and AIDS
18.    Center for Interactive Pedagogy
19.    SOS hotline for women and children victims of violence
20.    Women for Peace
21.    KIC Pralipe
22.    NEC-RP Kragujevac
23.    Voice of Kosovo and Metohija
24.    Association Help for the Children
25.    Balkan Center for Migration and Humanitarian Activities
26.    HO Bozur
27.    Association Iskra
28.    Society for Development of Children and Youth - Open Club
29.    NGO Panonija
30.    Labris - Organisation for Lesbian Human Rights
31.    Association Sveti Spas
32.    Association against AIDS – JAZAS
33.    Together Together
34.    Local Democracy Centre LDA Nis
35.    Mental Disability Rights Initiative MDRI-S
36.    Autonomous Women's Center
37.    Association of Citizens Nexus
38.    Women in Black
39.    INTEGRA, Kraljevo
40.    Children's Center Small Prince
41.    Ecumenical Humanitarian Organization
42.    Youth Integration Center
43.     Liceulice (Face of the Street)
44.    Group 484
45.    Victimology Society of Serbia
46.    Gay Straight Alliance
47.    Committee for Human Rights Vranje / SOS Hotline Vranje
48.    PAAD Center for Social-Culturological Excellence
49.    Center for Improvement and Promotion of Socially Marginalized Groups New World
50.    Association of Citizens Kula    
51.    Roma Information Center (RIC)
52.    Association of Citizens Ekobecej
53.    NGO School of Peace Kragujevac
54.    Gayten LGBT
55.    Center for Equal Rights
56.    Transparency Serbia
57.    Fund for Open Society
58.    UTLOSS
59.    Committee for Human Rights Leskovac
60.    NGO European Vojvodina
61.    Association Fenomena
62.    Association of Roma Women Osvit, Nis
63.    Association Center for Public Policy Research
64.    SOS Vlasotince
65.    Youth Initiative for Human Rights
66.    PRO BONO
67.    Center for Minority Rights

The initiative is also supported by:

68.    Office of the Protector of Citizens in Subotica
69.    Judges' Association of Serbia
70.    Association of Public Prosecutors and Deputy Public Prosecutors of Serbia
71.    Protector of Citizens

The Coalition for Access to Justice (Coalition) submitted on 24 January the initiative for assessing the constitutionality of the recently adopted Law on Civil Procedure, whose application starts on 1 February 2012 , and which, as stated in the initiative, limits access to justice and threatens the freedom of thought, action and critical opinion. Because of the possible irreparable harm to the citizens of Serbia, the submitting organisations proposed to the Constitutional Court to suspend the implementation of the disputed provisions until a decision on their compliance with the Constitution and ratified international documents is brought.

The submitted initiative for assessing the constitutionality refers to Articles 85, 170, 193, 499 and 500. These provisions relate to the requirement of professional legal representation in civil procedures, the position of the Republic of Serbia as defendant and the procedure for the protection of collective rights and interests.
The following organisations are the members of the Coalition for Access to Justice: Center for Advanced Legal Studies, Civil Rights Defenders, CHRIS - Network of the Committees for Human Rights in Serbia, Humanitarian Law Center, Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Independent Journalists' Association of Vojvodina, Sandzak Committee for Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms and Praxis.

Download: Initiative for accessing the constitutionality of the Articles 85, 170, 193, 499 and 500 of the Law on Civil Procedure

Platform for the right to adequate housing was presented today at the meeting held on the occasion of the eviction of informal Roma settlement in Block 72 in Novi Beograd. More than sixty civil society organizations (CSOs), eight networks, CSOs coalitions, and the National Council of the Roma National Minority have supported the Platform.

The Platform is an informal grouping of NGOs working at the domestic and international level on issues of human rights, anti-discrimination, anti-racism and Roma rights. The need to create this platform came from a worrying increase of forced evictions over the past three years – 15 forced evictions, which affected over 1,500 Roma, have been identified.

This document gathers the organizations which express concern over the increased number of forced evictions conducted contrary to ratified international standards binding on the Republic of Serbia, and it primarily presents the attitudes related to the forced eviction of the informal Roma settlement in Block 72. In addition, the Platform provides recommendations for all forthcoming evictions.

Platform for the right to adequate housing represents a contribution of CSOs to the elaboration of regulations or other documents, which will regulate the evictions of informal settlements in compliance with international human rights standards.

The Platform has been presented to the Ministry of Environment, Mining and Spatial Planning, Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, Public Administration and Local Self-Governance – Directorate for Human and Minority Rights, Republic Housing Agency, Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia and representatives of the City of Belgrade. 

Download: Platform for the Right to Adequate Housing

Despite the severest commendation of the announced eviction and undertaking of all available legal activities, and the international action of solidarity with Mevljuda Kurtesi and her family, she and her six minor children were forcibly evicted from the flat in 4 Ljeska Street in Banovo Brdo in Belgrade on 25 October 2011. This is another in the series of illegal forced evictions in the territory of the City of Belgrade, which turned Mevljuda and her children, internally displaced persons from Kosovo, into homeless people and deprived them of the possibility to have a decent life. The eviction was followed by racial comments of the neighbours, which culminated with unabashed joy when Mevljuda was evicted in the street.

To remind, Belgrade Land Development Public Agency, which previously gave Mevljuda the flat for use and now requires the eviction, did not offer the alternative accommodation or the explanation for the eviction. The Municipality of Cukarica rejected written requirements from several non-governmental organizations to suspend the eviction since it was contrary to international standards to which our country committed itself by ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which refer to the eviction process and provision of an alternative accommodation.

Since we refuse to be accomplices in this inhuman and illegal eviction of Mevljuda and her children, we decided to support by our presence her decision to remain in the apartment she lives in. On that occasion, two activists of the Regional Centre for Minorities, who did not want to move from the entrance to Mevljuda’s apartment, were taken to police station Cukarica where they were interrogated in the presence of the legal representative from YUCOM. Criminal charges were pressed against them for the criminal act of “justice disturbance” based on the Article 336 b of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia. We consider this as a pressure made on human rights defenders, with an intention to intimidate and give up from the consistent and unreserved struggle for full respect of human rights.

We demand that the competent city institutions immediately provide an adequate alternative accommodation for Mevljuda, who is temporarily accommodated in the cardboard barrack at her mother’s in the informal Roma settlement Belvil. At the same time, we point to the state institutions, which want to criminalize solidarity and distract us from such commitment, that we will continue uncompromisingly  defend human rights and stand by those whose rights are violated, who are poor and deprived.


Women in Black
Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights – YUCOM
Youth Initiative for Human Rights – YIHR
Praxis
Minority Rights Centre
Regional Centre for Minorities

The Coalition for Access to Justice was established on 23 December 2011. The Coalition members are the following organisations: Centre for Advanced Legal Studies, Civil Rights Defenders, CHRIS - Network of the Committees for Human Rights in Serbia, Humanitarian Law Centre, Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia, Sandzak Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms and Praxis. The Coalition members have associated with the aim to jointly respond to the restrictions on the achieved level of human rights and freedoms regarding the exercise of the rights to access to justice, which ensued as the consequence of the adoption of the new Law on Civil Procedure, as well as the Criminal Procedure Code and the Criminal Code.

In the upcoming period, the Coalition activities will be focused on advocating for the amendments to the aforementioned laws and the adoption of the Law on Free Legal Aid that will fully respect the citizens' interests regarding their freedom to choose and receive high-quality legal aid.   

Today we are marking the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, the most important international act aimed at preventing statelessness.

It is estimated that worldwide there are about 12 million stateless persons – those who are not considered to be nationals by any state under the operation of its law and who are denied access to all other rights on a daily basis as a consequence of being deprived of citizenship.

Statelessness may be the result of the conflicts of laws, discriminatory regulations depriving the marginalised communities of the possibility to acquire citizenship, succession of states after which a number of citizens do not succeed in acquiring citizenship of the newly established states, administrative practices related to the acquisition, recovery and loss of citizenship, as well as other numerous reasons.

In a world divided into states and citizens, those who fail to fit in that division are subject to various forms of exclusion. As a result, people without any citizenship have always encountered expulsions and restrictions on their fundamental human rights and freedoms. The Convention, whose fifty years of existence is celebrated today, resulted from the efforts of the international community to provide protection to those who cannot get protection from any state and to prevent the emergence of more people that no country would consider to be their nationals. Half a century later, the lives of stateless persons still attract the attention of the international community; there are newly emerging obstacles to the realisation of the right to citizenship and new causes of statelessness, but also the expectations that a solution will be finally found for those that cannot call any country their own.

Marking the anniversary of the Convention is an opportunity to once again point to the difficulties of those who face a risk of statelessness in Serbia and the necessity of solving their problems that have been neglected for too long.

There are those among them who have not been registered in birth registry books and for that reason remained without citizenship. Some of them were registered in the citizenship registry books that were destroyed, while others were left without citizenship upon the dissolution of the former state or acquired citizenship of one of the former republics in which they do not live.

You can read more about the obstacles to exercise the right to citizenship in the Republic of Serbia, the groups whose right to citizenship continues to be violated and the recommendations for overcoming the identified problems in the Praxis’ report entitled "Persons at Risk of Statelessness in Serbia."

Download the report: Persons at Risk of Statelessness in Serbia   

The non-governmental organisation Praxis welcomes the fact that the Bill Amending the Law on Non-contentious Procedure has been recently sent to the parliamentary procedure. The adoption of this law will be a step forward towards resolving the problems of legally invisible persons - those who have not been registered into birth registry books and who are prevented from exercising their basic human rights granted by the Constitution and legislation of the Republic of Serbia.

Let us be reminded that after many years of continuous efforts invested by Praxis, the Center for Advanced Legal Studies and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, into resolving the problem of legally invisible persons in a systemic way, Praxis and the Center for Advanced Legal Studies, in cooperation with the Protector of Citizens, drafted a proposal of the Law Amending the Law on Non-contentious Procedure, which was adopted by the government last week. This law has ended up in the parliamentary procedure after numerous appeals of the civil sector, recommendations of international organisations, UN treaty bodies and the European Union, which persistently pointed to the necessity of solving the problems of legally invisible persons.

It has been estimated that around 6,500 of legally invisible persons, mostly Roma, live in Serbia and that due to administrative barriers, multi-generational social exclusion and poverty, war events and the absence of legal provisions that would recognise them as citizens of Serbia, they have not been able to exercise any of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and ratified international instruments in the field of human rights.

The non-governmental organisation Praxis expects that the MPs of the National Assembly will recognise the seriousness of the problems faced by legally invisible persons and that the current composition of the National Assembly will adopt the Bill Amending the Law on Non-contentious Procedure, which will allow these persons to enjoy equal rights like all other citizens of Serbia.

The Coalition against Discrimination strongly condemns the yesterday's racially motivated attack on A.O., a third grade student of the Secondary School of Commerce, which occurred in Belgrade. The attack on this young man was accompanied by racist insults and curses, which in addition to serious bodily harm, violated the dignity of this young man. A quick response of the police that have already arrested the perpetrators deserves praise and raises hope that the police will respond promptly and efficiently also in other similar cases with less media coverage.

In the past year, the Coalition against Discrimination recorded several cases of racially motivated attacks on Roma men and women and their homes, and other racist incidents to which the state authorities failed to respond in a proper manner. The investigation often ended with an indictment against unknown persons, and the motive of hatred towards the members of a minority group was not considered to be an aggravating circumstance. We emphasise that the Law on the Prohibition of Discrimination stipulates that the punishable offences in which hatred or hostility towards a person because of his/her personal characteristic is a predominant or exclusive motive qualify as severe discrimination.

Moreover, the unambiguously racist attacks are often characterised as peer violence, hooligan incidents, usual quarrels among the neighbours, and so on. Even the Roma National Council, a body that should unreservedly represent the interests of its ethnic community, refrained to call the yesterday's event by its right name, opting for the neutral term "vandalism". By avoiding naming these attacks by their right name, we avoid facing with the essence of the problem. Therefore, we once again emphasise the importance of codifying hate crimes and introducing adequate legal penalties for the offences perpetrated out of hatred towards a minority group.
At the same time, the members of minority communities often, understandably, distrust the state and its institutions, and the hate crimes that go unpunished do not contribute to building confidence and do not encourage them to report these crimes. Particularly disconcerting is the indifference of society that has normalised racist stereotypes and insults, many of which have found their place in the media, literature, textbooks, and so on. Hence, in addition to the adoption of the laws and their consistent application, it is important to work on changing people's consciousness and achieving the commitment of the entire society that any form of racism will not be tolerated.

The members of the Coalition against Discrimination are: Center for Advanced Legal Studies, Civil Rights Defenders, Labris - Lesbian Human Rights Organisation, Anti-Trafficking Centre, Network of the Committees for Human Rights in Serbia (CHRIS Network), Association of Students with Disabilities, Gayten LGBT, Praxis and Regional Center for Minorities.

The statement is supported by Women in Black.

Download (only in Serbian): Discrimination in Serbia for 2010

The Coalition against Discrimination presented its 2010 Annual Report on Discrimination in Serbia and awarded prizes for combating discrimination in 2010. Sasa Gajin, Coordinator of the Coalition against Discrimination and Ljupka Mihajlovska from the Association of Students with Disabilities spoke about the report.

The Coalition against Discrimination established the annual Award for Combating Discrimination in recognition of individuals, organisations, institutions, companies and the media who have invested the greatest efforts, in the course of one year, to combat discrimination against minority and marginalised groups and contributed to the promotion of equality of all citizens in Serbia. The Coalition against Discrimination decides on the award winners on the basis of the proposals submitted by individuals and organisations by the end of 2010. The members of the Coalition against Discrimination are: Center for Advanced Legal Studies, Civil Rights Defenders, CHRIS – Network of the Committees for Human Rights in Serbia, Gayten LGBT, Labris - Lesbian Human Rights Organisation, Praxis, Regional Center for Minorities, Association of Students with Disabilities.

This year’s winners of the Award for Combating Discrimination for the outstanding contribution to the fight against discrimination in 2010 are:

Public authorities:  Residential Institution for Adults Male pcelice
Civil society organisations: NGO IZ Kruga, Organisation for the Protection of Rights and Support of Women and Children with Disabilities in Serbia
Media: Film Festival Slobodna zona
Business sector: Metro Cash & Carry d.o.o. Belgrade
Public figures: Dragoljub Rasa Todosijevic, artist

Mr. Björn Mossberg, Head of Development and Cooperation Department of the Swedish Embassy in Belgrade, handed the awards to the winners.