Donor: Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), Belgrade
Duration of the project: March 2008 – April 2009
The Project was implemented in four stages from March 2008 until March 2009. The first two stages entailed the completion of the process of monitoring the work of courts and other state authorities in the fields of prohibition of discrimination, domestic violence, combating organized crime and prosecution of war crimes, started back in 2006. During the latter two stages of the project, working group of experienced experts working under BCHR auspices analysed the monitoring results and all other relevant data. The experts were Judge of the Special Chamber for Organized Crime of the Belgrade District Court Radmila Dragicevic-Dicic, lawyer Vladimir Djeric, Professor Vojin Dimitrijevic, and Dr. Vesna Petrovic. In the period of three months these experts were tasked to produce the first drafts of the future legislative proposals in relevant areas. In their work, experts relied on the data gathered and analyzed in the monitoring stage.
As a result of this phase BCHR produced policy papers on selected topics, having in mind the need to amend the existing legislation or adopt new one to boost the effectiveness and efficiency of the state authorities, particularly the courts and prosecution offices. This approach, based on the collaboration of experts in different but mutually interlinked legal and social fields, was novel in Serbia and was aimed at formulating complementary legal solutions that will be more easily applied.
In the stage four the policy papers were presented to the expert public at four interactive round tables in Novi Sad, Niš, Kragujevac and Belgrade. Round tables were organised to receive feedback and comments professionals working in courts, prosecution offices, penal sanctions enforcement and competent state administration bodies e.g. Ombudsman office, members of academia, media and civil sector representatives.
The feedback and comments were taken into consideration with a view to improving the working group’s proposals. The proposed legal solutions were then reviewed in meetings with National Assembly party caucuses and representatives of the Justice Ministry. As the end result of the project, the some legislative proposals submitted to the National Assembly for adoption, were amended in accordance with the findings of the expert goups, e.g. Law against discrimination which is was adopted in Parliament on 26 of March 2009, an amendment on Article 22 was accepted by the legislator (a new basis was introduced against discrimination of children – health condition). The other amendment was made to Article 27: we suggested adding HIV positive persons and their families to the list, but this was not accepted by the Parliament.
Additional project activities financed form Training Voucher Found
A two day training was organized for 15 young lawyers and law students, participant of BCHR Training for trainers annual school with the aim of training future monitors. Participants of the training/seminar learned about monitoring techniques, but also expended their knowledge in four selected topics: war crimes, organized crimes, domestic violence, and discrimination.
