NGO: Victims must achieve right to compensation

NGO: Victims must achieve right to compensation

In a statement issued on Friday, the NGO urged all those involved in Serbia's accession to the EU to, during the process of harmonization of national legislation with the EU acquis, acknowledge all international standards regarding the rights of victims of human rights violations, including those of the EU acquis, and the right to reparation.

"The European Commission's screening for Chapter 23, which refers to Justice and Human Rights, contains recommendations on the rights of victims of war crimes and human rights abuses in the 1990 to financial compensation and other forms of reparation," said the FHP.

The organization further recalls that the European Commission on July 30 published a report on the Chapter 23 screening, which includes an analysis of the existing legal framework in the field of justice and human rights and a set of recommendations for its harmonization with EU regulations.

Within the report, a special section is devoted to war crimes - however, stressed the FHP, no recommendations in this area are related to victims' rights to financial compensation, nor to health-care, psycho-social, legal and other forms of government assistance.

"The rights of victims are spoken about only in terms of their position in the judicial process," noted the statement.

The absence of recommendations on human rights of victims of war crimes is surprising especially because the victims' right to reparations was the subject of an explanatory screening, as evidenced by the agenda of the screening, the organization said, and added:

"The European Commission explicitly included in the screening process the European Council Directive on compensation for victims of crime, but this directive is not mentioned in the report."

"This topic was the subject of criticism in EC's progress reports on Serbia. In a report from 2013, it was pointed out that in the field of assistance and support to victims of war crimes no progress was made. Additionally, a 2009 report stressed, in the context of war crimes, that victims and their families were denied justice," the statement said.

The FHP recalls that, according to the Council of Europe and the UN Committee Against Torture, Serbia was violating the right of victims to compensation and other forms of reparation.

Under the current law, the right to assistance and support from the state is denied to those victims killed in the territory of another country and killed through crimes committed by Serb forces, to all the families of the disappeared, victims of sexual violence, victims suffering from psychological consequences of surviving the violence and victims with physical disabilities less than 50 percent.

The FHP pointed out that, given that the mentioned law does not apply to victims of crimes committed by Serb forces who were citizens of other post-Yugoslav states, they are trying to achieve their right to financial compensation in lawsuits filed against the Republic of Serbia.

"The courts in most cases refuse requests for compensation due to the alleged statute of limitations, and in rare cases when the lawsuits are successful, they result in degrading amounts of compensation," the statement said.