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In March 2013, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on the protection of human rights defenders. It establishes principles and standards for States to create an enabling environment for human rights defenders. One year after its adoption, the Human Rights House Network calls upon States to implement this resolution.

In many parts of the Balkans, Caucasus and Eastern Europe human rights defenders face threats and violence, slander and intimidations, and are the targets of new laws restricting their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, and simply to work to defend human rights.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, activists and protestors have recently been harassed by police forces for various reasons. In Banja Luka, they were taken in custody for “informative talks”. In Sarajevo, peaceful protestors were in custody and interrogated about the 6 June and 1 July protests in front of Parliament.

18 years after their death in the Srebenica massacre, 409 newly identified victims were laid. Also on 11 July 2013, Radovan Karadžić’s acquittal for genocide in municipalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina was reversed.

The right to be a human rights defender has been reinforced by the resolution adopted by consensus at the Human Rights Council. The resolution focuses on legislation affecting, restricting and criminalising the work and activities of human rights defenders.

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.