The extent to which Bosnia and Herzegovinia’s (B&H) state officials take their obligations towards international organizations seriously, illustrates the fact that they did not start writing their National report yet, although the deadline in November is coming close.
The report of the Council of Ministries of B&H should be helpful to the Council of the UN to shape the final image of the situation of human rights in this country. When its adoption happens, the report will greatly effect the behaviour of the world organizations towards B&H. The most powerful countries, including those financial ones, will also use the UN report as their directives. Therefore the UN report of the Human Rights Council is very important for the future of B&H.
Unhappy image
In the Ministry of Human Rights of B&H, this delay they justify with „numerous other, more important obligations“. The Minister Assistant, Saliha Djuderija is however an optimist. According to her, consultations and preparations for conducting the report are already made, so the draft of the National report is done. However, she complains that the legal procedure of the adoption of the reports in general, is complicated because it must be set as a topic on a public debate.
„I expect that the document will be published on the web portal of the Council of Ministry in few days“, says Djuderija.
However, no matter what and when the report is finished, Human Rights Council of the UN will not consider it completely reliable, since it is common that states are seeing their human rights situation through pink glasses.
That’s why the new UPR mechanism for monitoring of human rights of the UN member countries, takes in consideration other reports as well. In case of B&H those are the Institution of the Ombudsmen for Human Rights in B&H and non-governmental sector in B&H. Their reports are already submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
As well as the report of the Informal NGO Coalition for UPR which consists of 30 non-governmental organizations from B&H, the report of the Institution of Ombudsmen for Human Rights in B&H, also illustrates unhappy image of the human rights situation in B&H. According to the report of the Ombudsmen, in the past several years numerous action plans for human rights protection, have been adopted, but their implementation has never happened. That’s why B&H does not have its National action plan for human rights as platform for acting in this area.
„Measures that are being taken under ad hoc principle, do not show permanent solutions for certain violation of human rights, which awakens true legal insecurity for the citizens“, states the Institution of Ombudsmen in B&H.
The key problem of B&H citizens regarding the violations of their rights is in the fact that the source of their violation is in the B&H Constitution itself and certain Laws that have emerged from this main legal document of the country. The universal human rights are in this document of B&H nationally coloured, which automatically represents their negation and violation.
The usage of law
Causes of the lack of the rule of law in B&H are numerous, and the problem often appears even in regards to very good legal solutions. The reason for this is the practice of B&H authorities to partially implement the laws, in accordance to the current interests of the political parties, but also informal groups usually declared as „protectors of national interests“. The problem of the inadequate usage of law, Ombudsmen sees in the lack of efficient mechanism for its supervising.
„Inspection bodies which do have the right to follow the monitoring of the implementation of laws, are not sufficiently efficient, and in some areas are not established at all or they are not secured with material-technical means for work. This brings the consequences such as that the Inspection is helpless to continuously and independently monitor the law implementation under state duty, but it also causes citizens’ discomfort“, they state from the Ombudsmen institution.
The Institution of Ombudsmen for Human Rights in B&H has pointed out in its report main loops in chain of causes which keep the country of B&H in the very bottom of the world ladder of the countries with the most human rights violations. It will be very interesting to see how will the state of B&H justify those causes in February 2010, because the state itself, is violating the most human rights of its citizens.
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