Another generation of students and young professionals successfully completed this year’s “Vojin Dimitrijević” Human Rights School  on Wednesday, 15 December, which closed with a lecture on what non-government organisations are and why they are important. This, 26^th Human Rights School was held online only, via ZOOM, because of the anti-pandemic measures.

Thirty-two participants from across Serbia had the opportunity to attend intensive comprehensive training on human rights and their protection. They were familiarised with as many as 45 topics, notably, the development and sources of human rights law, as well as topics concerning the right to life, prohibition of discrimination, prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, the right to liberty and security, the freedom of expression, media and human rights, personal data protection and access to information of public importance, international humanitarian law and many others.

Over 50 hours of lectures held during the “Vojin Dimitrijević” Human Rights School also covered privacy and human rights in the digital age, freedoms of association and public assembly, economic and social rights, asylum and migration, rights of the child, rights of national minorities and rights of LGBT persons. The participants also followed lectures on Chapters 23 and 24 of Serbia’s accession talks with the EU, judicial independence, protection of human rights before courts in Serbia and the right to a fair trial, international criminal courts, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Union and human rights, and protection of human rights before UN bodies. The lectures also covered the increasingly topical issues of business and human rights and the right to a healthy environment.

Most participants in the “Vojin Dimitrijević” Human Rights School are senior undergraduate and graduate students of law, political sciences and other social sciences. This year’s attendees also included students majoring in languages and biology. All of them signed up for the School because they wanted to learn more about human rights so that they could themselves engage in and contribute to their respect in Serbia in the future.

The holding of the Human Rights School was supported by the German Foreign Ministry via the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Belgrade and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Belgrade.

The BCHR has the honour to present a new publication: Seven Decades of the Legal Protection of Refugees – Collection of Papers Marking the 70^th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. 

The 70^th anniversary of the adoption of one of the key international treaties – the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 2021 – is marked this year. The Collection aims not only to mark the jubilee but also to emphasise the importance of this international treaty, the implementation of which has helped save millions of lives of people who had to or were forced to leave their countries of origin for justified reasons.

The BCHR also published the Collection to mark the first decade of its successful cooperation with the UN’s refugee agency – the UNHCR in Belgrade. Through our joint efforts over the past 10 years, we have helped improve the national asylum and refugee integration system, by providing free legal aid to refugees and asylum seekers in Serbia, organising expert seminars and conferences, and advocating improvements of the legislative framework and the implementation of accepted international refugee law standards.

We also wanted to highlight the importance of UNHCR’s efforts to protect refugees, displaced persons and asylum seekers and recall that this organisation has been extending them assistance in cooperation with other specialised UN agencies, international organisations and local partners for seventy years now. The Republic of Serbia is a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. It has also ratified many other international treaties protecting human rights and particularly vulnerable categories of people. Serbia’s Constitution also devotes many articles to the protection and improvement of human rights. By adopting the Asylum Act in 2008, Serbia established the legal framework for the protection of refugees through the asylum procedure and provided them with the possibility of obtaining international protection and integrating in Serbia’s society.

The publication “Seven Decades of Legal Protection of Refugees” is available for download here in Serbian.

Belgrade Centre for Human Rigths and BCHR’s Youth Team are very pleased to invite you to a unique event that focuses on the voices of young people and their human rights – Youth Rights Talks, which will be held on Tuesday, 7th of December, at 11 A.M. For the fourth year in a row, Youth Rights Talks provides young people with a safe space to publicly express their views, thoughts, and stories on social issues, thus establishing dialogue among young people and relevant institutions in the country.

This year’s leading theme is the right to a healthy environment and environmentally sustainable communities with our slogan #WhatNext?. Among the hundred participants, we expect young people from all over Serbia, international organizations, decision-makers, and institutions that deal with issues, problems, and the future of young people in Serbia at the policy level.

You can follow our event via the ZOOM platform, by registering at the link:
https://undp.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0sf-qhpjMrHtTrqTgCHjYaN17b-U3VJPEE

The official language of the event is Serbian. A translation to English will be provided. The event is accessible to people with disabilities, and Serbian sign language interpreters will be provided.

Youth Rights Talks 2021 is organized by the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights in cooperation with the United Nations Human Rights Team in Serbia. 

The detailed agenda of the event in english is HERE.

The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights has published its publication Prohibition of Torture and Other Forms of Ill-Treatment in Serbia 2018-2020, which includes an analysis of the relevant national criminal law, prosecutorial investigations and court proceedings against public officials suspected of extortion of confessions and torture or ill-treatment. The publication analyses investigations of police ill-treatment during the July 2020 civic protests and presents the results of a survey of public awareness of post-arrest rights. 

The research shows that the national criminal law framework on the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment is unsatisfactory and that the numerous shortcomings of the Criminal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code, the Legal Aid Act and other regulations are precluding effective investigations of ill-treatment cases and the adequate punishment of public officials found guilty of those crimes. 

Police officers still account for most public officials charged with these crimes. The data indicate that their collegiality goes beyond professional; as a rule, they neither report their fellow officers who torture or ill-treat people nor testify against them (at least 226 officers testified in such cases but none of them confirmed that the defendants had used excessive force against the victims). Investigations against public officials are neither prompt nor comprehensive and are rarely independent. Nearly all public officials found guilty have been handed down suspended sentences. In the analysed period, only two police officers found guilty of torturing an individual in Niš were convicted by a final judgment to five and eight months’ imprisonment, and only five officers found guilty in one case (of ill-treatment during the 2014 Pride Parade in Belgrade) lost their jobs. In all other analysed cases, the convicted officers did not suffer any work-related consequences, except for one officer whose salary was cut by 20%. In all cases ending with a final decision, the courts instructed the victims of ill-treatment to claim damages in civil proceedings.

Not one of the scores of proceedings initiated in response to police brutality during last year’s protests have been completed. The prosecution offices and the Interior Ministry’s Internal Control Sector claim that they cannot establish the identity of the uniformed officers not wearing visible ID who ill-treated people on Belgrade and Novi Sad streets in July 2020.

The survey showed that members of the public are insufficiently aware of their rights in case they are deprived of liberty.

The research was conducted with a project funded by the European Centre for Not-for-Profit Law.

The analysis is available in Serbian and English.

On 2 November 2021, the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, with the support of the UNHCR Office in Belgrade, held an online panel discussion on Statelessness and the Refugee Law. The BCHR traditionally organizes events on issues of importance for the inclusion of refugees in the society of the Republic of Serbia.

The reason for organizing the event was our initiative to analyze the position of stateless persons who are also refugees, with reference to the general legal status of stateless persons, then the main challenges faced by refugees who are also stateless persons, as well as the presentation of individual examples from practice.

The panelists were Nina Murray and Patricia Cabral from the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) and Milan Radojev from NGO Praxis Serbia. The event was opened by Sonja Tošković, the Executive Director of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and the moderator was Vuk Raičević, legal advisor of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights.

The first part of the panel discussion was devoted to general issues related to statelessness. Milan Radojev spoke about the concept of statelessness and its causes, international instruments related to statelessness, the position and rights of stateless persons. He then explained the procedures for determining the status of stateless persons, prevention of statelessness and the position of stateless persons in Serbian legislation.

Nina Murray and Patricia Cabral presented an overview of the relationship between the refugee law and statelessness and why statelessness is relevant in the refugee context. The usual profiles of stateless refugees were analyzed, as well as the main challenges for stateless refugees in Europe and the analysis of international standards for their protection. Examples of good practice from other countries were presented, and Vuk Raičević also presented examples from practice and challenges in the context of Serbia. Representatives of the European Network for Statelessness presented to the participants of the panel discussion the tools and resources to support the work of lawyers, decision makers and communities.

An open discussion was held at the end of the panel. Among the 42 participants in this event were representatives of several state institutions, then the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees in Belgrade, as well as representatives of international organizations and colleagues from the civil sector.

We also saw this event as an opportunity to consider the possibilities of joint multisectoral action to improve the current situation in this area in our country, exchange experiences, as well as future cooperation.

The panel discussion is part of the project “Support to Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Serbia”, which the Belgrade Center for Human Rights is implementing with the support of the UNHCR.