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SDHR Gerhard Enver Schrömbgens, OSCE Head of
Mission Robert Beecroft, UNHCR Deputy Chief of Mission Udo Janz, CRPC Executive
Officer Steven Segal and UNMIBH Head of Civil Affairs Jaque Grinberg today
announced a New Strategic Direction for the full implementation of the property
laws by end 2003.
Seven years after the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed, over 110,000
families are still denied repossession of their own homes in Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
It has become clear that the reason for such widespread human rights
violations is selective enforcement of the property laws. Property laws have not
been enforced in a uniform, efficient and transparent way. Even in some of the
best-performing municipalities, local officials still violate the law in order
to allow privileged groups—such as judges, politicians, police and war
veterans—to remain illegally in other people’s homes. Many local authorities
throughout the country still fail to meet their legal obligations to find
alternative accommodation and then use this failure as an excuse to refuse to
meet their legal obligations to evict temporary occupants according to legal
deadlines.
This selective implementation of the property laws must stop now. The
authorities must ensure that all pre-war owners or occupancy right holders
repossess their claimed property in a timely manner and receive equitable
treatment in the processing of their property claims. The IC Principals
therefore reiterate that
- All evictions must be carried out in strict
accordance with legal deadlines, authorities cannot hide behind their failures
to provide alternative accommodation.
- in the interest of legality, efficiency, transparency
and fairness, all cases must be processed in chronological order, save for the
specific categories of claimants specified in law;
- All verified double/multiple occupants should immediately vacate occupied
property;
As part of a New Strategic Direction for property law implementation, the IC
Principals will continue to treat any deviation from the strict implementation
of the property laws as obstruction to the full implementation of Annex 6 &
7 of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
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