Print version Email to a friend

Bosnia's war victims struggle to get compensation

Wed, 1 Sep 2010 11:13 GMT

Source: trustlaw // Olga Kravets

SARAJEVO (TrustLaw) - Milan Mandic, a 55-year-old engineer from Sarajevo, knows exactly where his father Bozo was executed and then buried in June 1992, at the start of the war in Bosnia.

But he cannot retrieve his father's remains and the only way for him to prove he has inherited his father's land and the ruins of the house on the outskirts of Sarajevo is to keep the path in front of the property clean and tidy.

"I don't want to declare my father dead before his remains are found. He is alive for me even now, 18 years later. But until I produce a valid document that he is dead, I will not be able to get anything," Mandic said.

An estimated 30,000 people went missing in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, and it was not until 2004 that a law was passed to help relatives obtain information about their loved ones, exercise their property rights and receive compensation.

The law on missing persons was drafted by the Sarajevo-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and the International Committee of the Red Cross in cooperation with the Bosnian government. Under the law the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia-Herzegovina was formed as a joint initiative between the ICMP and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s council of ministers.

But the law has never been implemented because Bosnia's ethnically-based tripartite government cannot agree on who should fund the compensation for the relatives. 

Bosnia has a complex governmental, judicial and legislative structure which allows the former warring parties to share power. Bosnia is made up of two autonomous regions, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic, with an overarching parliament and government made up of the country's three ethnic groups - ethnic Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Croats and Serbs.

"In 2004 we had good political momentum and there was the political will. But the funding was immediately correlated with the admission of guilt," said Samira Krehic, ICMP's senior programme manager for the western Balkans region.

"The authorities in both entities (the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic) have decided that if they agree to fund this and that portion, or sponsor a certain part of the population, this would mean they admit guilt, which they don't want to do."

Although people disappeared from all sides of the conflict, the majority of missing persons are Bosnian Muslims, according to Krehic. A large burden of compensation would fall on the Serb Republic because many people disappeared in its territory, or relatives of the missing were resident there at the time of the disappearances.

Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in 1995 after they captured the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, in Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. The area had been a United Nations-protected safe zone, and it now forms part of the Serb Republic.

Bosnian Serb parliamentarians have blocked any progress with the missing persons law, including a proposed amendment that would establish a state fund paid for by taxes collected across the country. 

"The situation with the law is a clear reflection of the political situation in the country," Krehic said. 

Some families have received financial benefits but only after they declared their missing relatives dead, Krehic said. They were unable to obtain compensation under the missing persons law.

Kada Hotic, who lost five relatives including her husband Sead and son Samir, had to file a court case to prove her husband had been killed in Srebrenica before she could access his pension.

"He was a well-paid sociologist, so (his pension) now enables me to survive. I don't believe that the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina will ever provide me with any other compensation and that the (missing persons) law will ever work."

But 15 families who have been unable to access compensation through the national courts, have decided to take their cases to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Fourteen are filing their cases with the support of TRIAL, a Swiss nongovernmental organisation which offers legal help for victims of forced disappearances.

Bosnia's constitutional court has issued rulings in favour of the relatives but they have not been implemented, according to TRIAL’s Bosnia-based human rights coordinator Lejla Mamut. "But Bosnia wants to join the European Union and thus we expect it will pay (out the compensation) after we hopefully get the first ruling in Strasbourg in 2011," Mamut said. 

Jasminka Dzumhur, one of Bosnia's human rights ombudsmen, thinks the law should be replaced because the majority of the victims cannot afford to take their cases to Strasbourg.

"There should be a joint law on all war victims, divided into subcategories, such as torture victims, victims of sexual violence, members of missing persons families," she said. "This will also help to finally clarify the number of victims in each category. So far the law treats the relatives of the missing only as family members. We need to understand that they are victims themselves."

For Milan Mandic, though, time is running out. His municipal authority plans to build a park on his father's land and has turned down his request to renovate his father's house. The authority says Mandic has to prove he is the legal owner of the property, and give them a copy of his father’s death certificate.

"I don't have any rights to complain or question their decision," Mandic said.