Human Rights: Hostage To the State's Regression - Helsinki ...

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
• The police’s centralized structure allows no possibility for
forming police units at local level, which is, in the Helsinki Committee’s view,
an imperative need for countries such as Serbia. Besides, local authorities have
no influence whatsoever on the police forces operating in their territories.
• A new government and the Serbian Parliament should make it
possible for courts of law and prosecution offices (the special departments for
organized crime and war crimes in particular) to perform their tasks
independently and professionally. This especially refers to a number of
political crimes that still remain without epilogues in courts of law.
• The judiciary as a whole still holds that the international
documents Serbia has ratified cannot be directly applied. And even when
applied such cases are improvised and marked by judges’ subjectivity that
relies not on the international judiciary practice.
• Serbia should give up political phraseology and opt for Europe. In
this context duties and responsibilities of governmental bodies should be laid
down as soon as possible, and material and human resources upgraded with a
view to securing overall protection of human rights of Serbia’s citizens.
• Social dialogue should be opened in search for the
multiculturalism concept that maintains the identities of ethnic minorities but
also their integration into overall social, political and economic community.
What Serbia needs is a coherent, consequent and active minority policy, and
giving shape to such policy should be among her major strategic interests. A
republican law on minorities should be passed the same as a law on the
election of national councils. These law-making processes should be
transparent and include general public. Representatives of European
institutions should be more involved in monitoring inter-ethnic relations
particularly in Vojvodina, South Serbia and Sandzak.
• The fluid situation in Sandzak calls upon the official Belgrade to
allow political actors in the region to reach consensus, overcome schisms
within the Islamic religious community and solve problems through
compromise so as to curb further radicalization. Belgrade authorities should
act with more responsibility vis-à-vis the situation in Sandzak, especially when
it comes to the widening gap between the region’s two major ethnic
communities.
• In the matter of Vojvodina’s autonomy, the demands for
constitutional revision that would result in more authority invested into the
province should be answered. The same refers to Vojvodina’s endeavor to get
more integrated into contemporary European trends. The provincial
administration should be invested with more power to regulate and prevent
ethnically motivated incidents.
• As for the domain of healthcare, various levels of public health
protection (primary, secondary and tertiary) the same as healthcare institutions
should be functionally harmonized. Serbia needs a clear-cut and sustainable
Human Rights: Hostage To the State's Regression
strategy for public healthcare development that will precisely determine
various healthcare phases, objectives and those in responsibility. Further, the
Health Insurance Fund should be reformed in keeping with such strategy. The
existing healthcare legislation should be improved and new laws and bylaws
should be passed with active participation of medical officers of various
profiles.
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