It is estimated that around 1,300 refugee children and unaccompanied migrants are exposed to the risk of exploitation, violence and trafficking in human beings due to an increasingly restrictive border control policy and often inadequate response of the social protection system in the countries along the so-called Balkan route. This is the conclusion of a report published by the International Rescue Committee and Save the Children, in cooperation with 10 national and international organisations involved in providing assistance to refugees and migrants.

The social protection systems in the countries along the route often fail to identify and adequately support these extremely vulnerable children, including nine-year olds, who, fleeing from the war and poverty, cross thousands of kilometres without parents or guardians. These children are often "invisible" and in some cases, even when the social protection system identifies them, they are placed in inadequate conditions, including detention in some countries.

Risks to children traveling in this way have been further increased following the implementation of the agreement between the European Union and Turkey, which led to the closure of the borders along the so-called Balkan route. Due to these restrictive measures, unaccompanied children are forced to take desperate moves, thus relaying on traffickers or smugglers, whom they perceive as the only way to continue their journey.

The report further states that in this way some of these children become victims of exploitation, because the smugglers and traffickers are forcing them to work so they earn the money to continue their travel, and they are often being abused. Under these circumstances the children get neglected and exposed to enormous stress and danger. Even though they are trying to act boldly, their stories and drawings reveal harrowing details about their experiences on the road, for which they thought, would lead them to safety.

The social protection systems of the countries of the region, which need to identify and provide protection to unaccompanied children, face difficulties in their efforts to respond to the needs of vulnerable children whose numbers have been growing since the beginning of the crisis in 2015. In Serbia, the new demands have been met by increasing the accommodation capacities for unaccompanied children and employing additional social workers to provide them with support. However, additional efforts need to be invested to establish systemic solutions for the adequate protection of this group of children.

"Children need comprehensive support tailored to their needs“, says Jelena Besendić from Save the Children. "It is almost impossible for them to safely and legally continue their journey towards the EU countries. Many of these children decide to stay outside the system, and therefore do not get support from humanitarian organisations, and then often become targets of smugglers who use threats to manipulate them. Thus they become exposed to the risk of becoming victims of violence, abuse or exploitation.“ 

It is necessary to increase accommodation capacities in all countries along the route, and provide accommodation intended exclusively for unaccompanied children. Even when they are identified as children, unaccompanied minors are often placed in some centres together with adult refugees, unknown to them, or in the accommodation similar to detention, as is the case in Bulgaria and Hungary.

It often happens that unaccompanied children are placed under the guardianship of the employees of Social Welfare Centres who are overloaded because of simultaneously handling several similar cases, who lack sufficient experience or training for working with refugee and migrant children, and who are therefore unable to support them in accordance with applicable standards. Some children also complain that they are not sufficiently familiar with their rights or with the legal options available to them.

Every child must get all the help and protection that it needs. The governments of the countries along the route have to improve their system of support to this most vulnerable group, but before doing so, we have to ensure that these governments get necessary support and financial means to be able to handle the crises. The European Union and EU Member States must fulfill the commitments they have made and promise to adequately respond to the needs of these children. This also includes the resettlement of unaccompanied children to the EU countries as well as the reunification with their families,” said Ashly Lovett from IRC. “The governments who are doing so, must discontinue with the practice of placing the children in detention, and should assign trained guardians to unaccompanied children. If this measures are not implemented, the children who have already suffered traumas due to war, conflict and difficult journey, will be put in an even more difficult position, because there is no safe and legal way for them, they are not being adequately protected, and they are desperate to move on.”  The report was coordinated by the International Rescue Committee and Save the Children, and its creation was supported by NGOs Atina, Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Centre for Youth Integration, Ideas, Infor Park, Novi Sad Humanitarian Centre, Otvorena porta, PIN, Praxis and Terre des hommes.

For more information, see the announcement at the following link.

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.   

On the occasion of the 94th session of the  Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Praxis, in cooperation with the organisations SKRUG, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, European Network on Statelessness and European Roma Rights , submitted a written contribution including the information on 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.

The written contribution first pointed to the fact that Article 54a of the Criminal Code, which had introduced hate crime in the national legislation nearly five years before, was still not implemented in practice. It also stressed the problem of segregation and difficulties faced by Roma children in education, their over-representation in the fostering system and the absence of adequate response to the problem of early, child and forced marriages, which affected particularly Roma girls.

Commenting on the legislation and practices that affected particularly the Roma minority, the submitters of the written contribution warned of various obstacles that prevented timely birth registration for Roma children and of the remaining shortcomings in the procedures of permanent residence registration, which particularly affected Roma without the legal basis of housing.

Since Serbia could soon get a new Law on Foreigners, the contribution also pointed to the current version of the Draft Law on Foreigners whose provisions on the determination and prolongation of immigration detention discriminated against stateless persons, as a particularly vulnerable group of foreigners, and made them subject to arbitrary detention. The written contribution also mentioned the difficulties that may arise because of the lack of procedures for determining the status of a stateless person.

Finally, the contribution included some clear recommendations for allowing Roma and persons at risk of stateless to access their rights and for contributing to more consistent compliance with the obligations undertaken by Serbia under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.   

Download the written contribution here.

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. 

For more information, see the announcement at the following link.

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.

For more information, see the announcement at the following link.

In early October of the current year, Praxis warned about the situation of thirty-three families displaced from Kosovo facing a risk of becoming homeless after having been ordered to move out of the social housing in the suburban settlement “Beranovac” near Kraljevo.  

The residents of “Beranovac”, threatened with eviction, and Marija Dražović from Praxis spoke for Deutsche Welle about the situation of these people today and the lack of understanding and adequate response to their hardship.  

The DW footage that summarises all the events that happened after the publishing of our first statement is available here.

On the occasion of the upcoming European Commission’s Progress Report on Serbia, Praxis participated in the consultation meeting with the Delegation of the European Union in Serbia, and also submitted a written contribution on the progress achieved and the obstacles observed after the last, 2016 Commission’s report. The written contribution submitted by Praxis focused on the field of public administration reform and access to basic rights, while special attention was paid to the situation of Roma children. Praxis presented the observed shortcomings regarding the implementation of the new Law on General Administrative Procedure and pointed out that Serbia did not have yet the Law on Free Legal Aid, despite the ten-year debate on its adoption. The written contribution also mentioned the remaining obstacles to the prevention of statelessness and recalled that there was still no legal framework that would ensure that every child was registered immediately after birth. Praxis also warned about the over-representation of Roma children in the fostering system, and stressed the need for taking additional measures to prevent segregation in education and to ensure access to quality education for every child. Finally, the written contribution warned about the problem of child, early and forced marriages, especially affecting Roma girls who, due to the lack of adequate response to this practice, were denied access to a series of basic human rights.

Download the written contribution here.

Praxis participated in the second meetingof 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.

The report of the organisations European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), Institute for Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) and the European Network on Statelessness (ENS)warns that the lack of documents has extremely negative consequences for the lives of thousands of Roma living in the Western Balkans and Ukraine.

These organisations urge the countries in the region to focus on stateless Roma and to facilitate the birth registration procedure, which poses obstacles to Roma in accessing documents without which they cannot prove their identity and citizenship. It is emphasized that leaving Roma children without birth certificates leads to their growing up and living as stateless persons. As a result, thousands of Roma face difficulties in accessing core services and rights, such as the right to education, health care and housing.

One of the interviewed Roma women from Serbia says: "I did not give up, but I do not see that something will happen and change my situation for the better. I'm sorry because I know that many things would be better if I only had citizenship and documents.”

The report reveals the serious consequences that Roma suffer as a result of wars and dissolution of the former SFRY, along with systemic discrimination and social exclusion. It is particularly difficult for those who could not prove citizenship. The Roma who were forced to leave their homes during the war, often without any documents, upon return faced with complicated procedures and numerous difficulties in attempting to obtain documents. In addition, institutional discrimination and racism, recorded in some of the countries covered by the research, have created obstacles that prevent Roma from accessing the basic rights that other citizens enjoy.

The research also shows some positive and successful examples of civil society cooperation with the state aimed at facilitating the procedures for registering into birth registry books, eliminating legislative shortcomings and raising awareness about the importance of solving this problem. These efforts show that the problem of statelessness can be solved with a proactive approach and in line with the recommendations given in this report, which can serve as an example of good practice for other countries in the region.

At the same time, the report calls on the European Commission to recognise the problem of statelessness and discrimination against Roma as a matter of priority in the process of negotiations for EU membership. 

For more information, see the announcement at the following link.