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In an intervention in Geneva, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia-Herzegovina announced that its country will fulfil its obligations to end discrimination based on ethnicity to access the presidency.

In a small town, 170 kilometres south of Sarajevo, a journalist and human rights defender was beaten. Incident qualified by the local police as a minor event.

The trial of General Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb army chief accused of orchestrating war crimes and a campaign of genocide, has begun at a special UN court at The Hague in the Netherlands. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia recently made their opening statements against Mladić, almost a year after his arrest in Serbia and subsequent deportation. Mladić is accused of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including orchestrating the week-long massacre of over 7,000 Muslim boys and men at Srebrenica in 1995 during the Bosnian war.

Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to fail to address the problems of discrimination and human rights violations.

Member and partner NGOs of the Human Rights House Network are concerned by the threats against human rights defenders in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Authorities have the responsibility to take pro-active measures to ensure the security of human rights defenders in general – and in this recent case the members of the Human Rights House Sarajevo, especially the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Voluntary organisations, institutions and individuals worldwide are welcome to nominate candidates for the 2011 Rafto Prize for Human Rights. The Rafto Prize, awarded in memory of Norwegian professor Thorolf Rafto, is awarded to an individual or organisation that embodies and upholds the principles of the Human Rights Charter through activism or engagement.

The issues of gender equality, realization of women’s human rights in public and private spheres, and the application of domestic laws and international obligations, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of discrimination against Women (CEDAW), have been pushed into the background in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country still burdened by ethnic and national divisions, which hinder the social, economic and political development, and dominate the public discourse.

Shadow Report Presentation

Woman and Society Center recently conducted a study where they have analyzed the presence of women in political and public life, during the general election year 2010 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.