The Human Rights Council, in its Resolution 33/14 of 29 September 2016, established the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the right to development. Mr. Saad Alfarargi was appointed Special Rapporteur for a period of three years and took up his functions on 1 May 2017. In September 2017, the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 36/9, which mandated the Special Rapporteur to conduct Regional Consultations

Bearing in mind the importance of the Sofia Summit for the EU as a timely and high level debate within the EU countries as well as the challenges and opportunities that integrations of the Western Balkans bring to the European Union;

Following the Strategy for the Western Balkans of the European Commission that opens the doors for the countries of our surrounding, along with the time frame and clear perspective of finalizing all the EU integration processes in certain countries and speeding the processes in other countries;

Access to Justice in Serbia isn’t guaranteed for poor and marginalized citizens due to fragmentary and poorly developed system of free legal aid. The Law on Free Legal Aid still hasn’t been passed, although Serbia is bind to pass such a law by the Constitution and strategic documents brought in the last ten years.

When we speak about Access to Justice that is guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights and the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, the majority of people in Serbia usually isn’t even aware of their rights or doesn’t have enough resources to finance access to justice, especially due to the fact of non existence of such law that would regulate free legal aid as also due to the low standards of life insufficient to enable hiring lawyers or legal advisors.

In democratic societies, the possibility of effective legal protection of violated or endangered rights is a basic condition for the maintenance of Rule of Law. One of the instruments for exercising the right to access to justice and respecting the standards for a fair trial is the right to legal assistance. According to Article 67 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia (hereinafter: the Constitution), the right to legal assistance under the conditions specified by law is guaranteed to everyone.

In a letter to the UN Secretary-General, a coalition of more than 70 civil society organisations has put forward proposals to revitalise and enhance the process to select the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

MDTF JSS, in cooperation with the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights – YUCOM, conducted a promotion campaign of the Self-Representation Guide, which was jointly developed in 2017.

Citizens are usually unaware of their rights and obligations and therefore have a justified fear in meeting with unknown judicial procedures to them, since the outcome can sometimes have a crucial impact on their lives.

What happens if you have a legal problem but you can’t afford a lawyer?

In Serbia, we are one step closer to answering that very question.

The average salary in the country is around €365/month, but court and lawyer fees often climb to many times more than this.  As a result, most people cannot afford justice.

After undergoing profound political transformations, the Danube region is now facing diverse demographic, labour market and migration challenges, yet it lacks appropriate multi-level governance support structures, especially regards of migrants’ integration. The consortium of partners from nine countries (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, Germany, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic and Hungary) will address this challenge by creating the comprehensive, multilingual and transnational information platform DANUBE COMPASS.