The UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances visits Bosnia and Herzegovina… and so does TRIAL!
The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearancesundertook a country visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina form 14 to 21 June 2010 and met with the government, national and local authorities, international institutions, as well as with human rights NGOs and associations of families of victims.
TRIAL, whose June 2009 general allegation prompted the Working Group to request the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina to invite it to for the first country visit after 13 years of absence, also met with the Working Group on Monday June 14.
Lejla Mamut, Advocacy Center TRIAL (ACT) representative in Sarajevo, Gabriella Citroni, ACT legal adviser and Philip Grant, ACT Director, met with members of the Working Group to explain in details the legal and practical problems faced by relatives of victims of enforced disappearances, whatever their ethnic background may be. Absence of information regarding investigations and searches for the bodies; lack of prosecuting of those responsible for such acts; absence of a comprehensive reparations scheme: almost 15 years since the war ended, numerous victims’ relatives are still waiting to recover the remains of their loved ones and to obtain justice and redress.
ACT also organised trainings with members of its partner organisations to prepare them for the meetings these associations would be having with the Working Group.
The Working Group will issue a thorough report on its visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina by the end of the year and make recommendations to the government. The report will be discussed before the UN Human Rights Council in March 2011. TRIAL will closely monitor all upcoming developments and will intervene before local and national authorities to see that the Working Group’s recommendations are fully implemented.
More
- Press release of the Working Group, 21 June 2010
- ACT’s general allegation of June 2009
- ACT’s website in Bosnian
- ACT’s case in Bosnia Herzegovina
