The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) sent a report to the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (Committee) on January 9th, 2015, with regard to the situation in Serbia in this area of concern. The Committee will discuss the implementation of the Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (Convention) in Serbia for the first time at its 8th Session, scheduled for February 4th and 5th, 2015, in Geneva.
On 23rd December 2014, the public consultation on the Bill on the Rights of War Veterans,
Disabled War Veterans, Civilian Invalids of
War and their Family Members (the Bill) prepared by the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Policy (the Ministry) was closed. The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) believes that this Bill should be withdrawn from the adoption procedure, because it does not reflect the real needs and diversity of victims who live in Serbia, violates the constitutional principle of equal protection before the law for every citizen, and is deeply inconsistent with international and generally accepted norms relating to the protection of victims of human rights abuses.
The Court of Appeals in Belgrade has modified the judgment rendered by the Higher Court in Požarevac, by which the accused, Boban Petković, was found guilty of a war crime against a civilian population and sentenced to five years of imprisonment, and decreased his sentence to three years of imprisonment. The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) holds that three years of imprisonment is an inappropriately mild sentence and that the mitigating circumstances that the Court of Appeals considered in the case of the accused are unacceptable from the standpoint of justice for victims of war crimes.
Serbia’s transition away from the Milosevic-led criminal state of the 1990’s is symbolically entering a new stage. 2015 begins with Serbia chairing the OSCE. Later in the year, the country hopes to open the first chapters of its European Union accession talks. While there are debates about the direction the Aleksandar Vucic-led government is taking on many important issues, the prime minister has made unequivocally bold and sweeping reforms on certain issues.
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