The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina organized a series of three roundtables and the final Conference on the common topic of „What does Bosnia and Herzegovina need to achieve in the field of human rights in order to satisfy the European Union criteria?“. The roundtables were held in Bihac on June 2, Livno on June 16 and Trebinje on June 30, and the Conference was held in Sarajevo on October 4 and 5. (07-OCT-05)

Background
Bosnia and Herzegovina is currently in the process of trying to meet the criteria of the European Union for the start of negotiations on the Stabilization and Association Agreement. One of the conditions is meeting of requirements of an efficient protection of human rights and liberties, in accordance with European standards. Over the whole duration of the process of integration into the European Union, this institution has been insisting on the very important issue of human rights and liberties. This is not a process led only by the executive and the legislature, but a process that requires wider involvement and engagement of citizens, civil society and their organizations.
 
Organizers said that round tables were focused on the premises and views of the participants about protection of human rights and freedoms, and about possible courses of acting toward speed up of all processes in order to meet the requirements of the European Union. Participants of the round tables were representatives of citizens, nongovernmental organizations, representatives of political parties and government.

The Conference intended to present experiences and practices of other countries that joined the European Union, especially the countries from the region – Slovenia, which has already become a member of the European Union, and Croatia, which is at the doorstep of negotiations for accession to the European Union, as well as experiences of other countries of the region. The Conference was focused on viewpoints of the participants about Bosnia and Herzegovina´s results in protection of human rights and liberties, exchange of experiences with representatives coming from the countries of the region, identification of future steps and tasks ahead of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the field of human rights in order to it meet the requirements of the European Union in this field, and progress towards integration into European and North Atlantic structures.

Conclusions
Regardless of the specificities of each of the regions where the roundtables, and at the end Conference, were organized, their taking place has shown that the Bosnia and Herzegovina’s authorities, but also the non-governmental sector have a vast task ahead when human rights are concerned and compliance with standards that could meet the European Union requirements. The most crucial observations made at the three roundtables can be summarised in the following way:

1. All three roundtables gathered an equal number of representatives of the governmental and the non-governmental sectors, which in some regions (Livno and Trebinje) was assessed as a practice that should be pursued in the future too.
2. Human rights violations have almost the same intensity in all three regions, but are of different kinds.
3. The right to return of people to their homes and property is at a satisfactory level in all three regions, but the existential issues of returnees remain – the lack of jobs, the undefined health and social care.
4. The awareness of the violation of rights is extremely low and proper attention needs to be paid to the education of citizens in the future period.
5. There are examples of segregation of people at work based on ethnicity. Many failures, especially concerning the Roma employment, or the “minority returns” could be dealt with by positive discrimination.
6. The minorities, especially the Roma, are the most endangered population in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Systemic support that would speed up the resolving of this issue is lacking. All efforts are reduced to the good will of representatives of the local authorities and their readiness to help the Roma population.
7. In their ruthlessness in violation of human rights, the authorities go as far as to make pressures on the judiciary or the institution of ombudsman, when the latter react against classic cases of violations of human rights (e.g. in labour relations). The former even obstruct implementation of the latter’s decisions and recommendations.
8. The Dayton Accord constitutional arrangement has made Bosnia and Herzegovina a country in which ethnicities has the primacy. Such a constitutional set-up prioritises collective over individual citizens’ rights.
9. The level of protection of human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina would be considerably higher if the government was not made up of nationalist political parties.
10.  The authorities tend to view violations of human rights through a nationalist prism. The universality of protection seems not to exist. The public is alarmed if the rights of OUR ethnic group are violated, while the rights of OTHER ethnic groups are ignored. This way, the insistence on collective rights and preservation of exclusive rights to protection of one ethnic group by a single political party does not lead to the solution of the problem. On the contrary, this leads to a ghetto-making in which every individual right of a person and a citizen is lost.
11.  Bosnia and Herzegovina still has the problem of the lack of implementation of the European conventions that had been made component parts of the Dayton constitution and therefore have primacy over domestic legislation.
12.  The authorities ignore the human rights institutions such as the ombudsmen, but often the courts as well. Legislation is made in order to prevent enforcement of final court decisions and resolutions.
13.  In all three regions, the discussion demonstrated that the right to biological survival is so dominant that it pushed all other rights behind.
14.  The privatisation resulted in violations of many rights, as it created an army of the unemployed and it had an ethnic prefix.
15.  Discrimination is still present in the education system and is being preserved, as the dualism in this very important social sector is favourable for ethnic oligarchies.

The Final report on the project will be published by the end of the year.