Project: Monitoring Serbia’s OSCE Chairmanship10Feb2016
Serbia did not deliver on all elements of self-assessment process
The year of Serbian OSCE chairmanship passed with great compliments about the work in the field of diplomacy. The situation is different when it comes to domestic policy. Although the Government of Serbia took the responsibility to be actively involved in the process of self-assessment of the level of fulfillment of the OSCE recommendations in the field of "human dimension" in Serbia, it was done late, incompletely and only formally.
A new model of self-assessment in fulfillment of OSCE commitments in the human dimension was introduced during the Swiss OSCE chairmanship with the purpose of giving example as the chairmanship country related to the fulfillment of OSCE commitments and responsibilities regarding domestic politics. The process implies that first of all independent bodies or academic experts analyze the assessment of the status of selected issues in the field of human rights and freedoms and democracy, then civil society and then government comments these findings.
The Government of the Republic of Serbia neither accomplished its tasks in timely manner, nor for all four themes. The discussion was not organized during the annual OSCE conference on human dimension in Warsaw in October, nor during OSCE Parallel Civil Society Conference and the Ministerial Council in Belgrade in the first days of December. Instead of discussions, quietly, at the end of the year the document was posted on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which only some of the themes were commented, while completely neglecting CSOs analysis.
In the introduction the Government states that the monitoring process was useful for the assessment of the current state of affairs and the progress Serbia made in implementing the OSCE commitments in the field of human rights, but also stating that in this area there is always more to be done. The document also mentions that strengthening cooperation with the civil society and promotion of their active participation in the work of the OSCE is one of the priorities of the Serbian Chairmanship. Serbian government defined four priority themes for self-assessment: freedom of assembly, electoral process, the position of Roma and gender equality. Additionally, civil society decided it was important to include three more themes in the monitoring process: position of national minorities, protection of human rights defenders and freedom of expression and media.
The Public Policy Research Center paid attention to freedom of expression and the position of Roma. The legal norms about Roma are compatible with OSCE recommendations and other international organizations, but in the Center’s report draws attention to the insufficient implementation. In the government reviews of the fulfillment of OSCE recommendations in Serbia there are no comments about the findings of the Center. There are some comments of the Office for Human and Minority Rights to the report of the Institute of Social Sciences which does not refer to the period we analyzed.
Office for Human and Minority Rights commented only electoral processes in the Republic of Serbia, with the emphasis on elections for national minorities. The government’s comment states that in addition to the fact that the elections were held without major irregularities, it is worth adding that no complaints were submitted to the Constitutional Court and that all the national councils of national minorities were successfully constituted. The Serbian Government did not give opinion about the findings of civil society organizations on the theme of Freedom of assembly. The Government Coordination Body of gender Equality sent their contribution regarding the Gender Equality theme, but it does not contain findings from the office of Commissioner for Protection of Equality. Instead there are opinions regarding entrepreneurship, agriculture and farms, as well as introducing gender perspective into all institutions.
Beside the Public Policy Research Center, members of the Coalition for monitoring human dimension commitments of the Serbia’s Chairmanship of the OSCE were: Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (the lead organization), Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights YUCOM, Forum for Ethnic Relations and Humanitarian Law Centre. Anti trafficking Action (ASTRA), Women Space and other NGOs participated in the drafting of the some parts of the report. The comments of the Civil Society Coalition for Assessment of Fulfillment of OSCE Commitments in the field of human dimension are available here. They were presented at the Parallel Civil Society Conference in December 2015.