OHR Press Releases

The representatives of OSCE, OHR and UNHCR would like to draw the attention of the Federation BaH Parliament and of the public to the fact that new legislation on the return of unclaimed apartments, which Parliament will discuss next week, must consider the continued right to alternative accommodation of the beneficiaries currently using them.

The High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, issued the following statement today. “Amid all the short-term manoeuvring and political gamesmanship of the last few days, the only fact which matters is being lost. We are now just days away from the tenth anniversary year of Dayton and of Srebrenica. And yet still the chief architect of the murder of 8,0 [...]

The High Representative today announced the start of a process designed to address the systemic weaknesses in BiH’s law enforcement and security institutions. This follows last week’s announcement by NATO foreign ministers that for the second time running BiH has failed to make progress in its efforts to join the Alliance’s Partnership for Peace as [...]

Speaking this morning at the start of the final Police Restructuring Commission (PRC) session - which is due to run until Wednesday this week - the High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, said “the PRC’s task is unambiguous; to create a single police system, free from political interference, capable of serving the citizen and taking on criminals from l [...]

"Nato’s communiqué highlights continued non-compliance of the RS authorities with the ICTY. It calls for the need to improve security and law enforcement structures, supporting the assessment made by the ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte at the UNSC earlier this month where she noted that there are fundamental systemic weaknesses build into the [...]

In commenting on the PIC conclusions about the Council of Ministers session, Prime Minister Terzic seems to want to shoot the messenger, rather that get the message. The message is clear. The EU’s Feasibility Study, states that among the 16 Feasibility study conditions it states CoM meetings must be convened “with sufficient regularity to tackle go [...]

Commenting on the revelation of Ratko Mladic’s personnel military file published in today’s press, the High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, said that the document indicates that the RS, through the VRS, had for a full seven years, been in flagrant breach of Dayton and their international obligations by formally retaining Ratko Mladic on their books [...]

The High Representative, Paddy Ashdowm participated today at the Conference on Judicial Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina - Current Status and Future Chalanges, organised by High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH (HJPC). At the Conference, he outlined a number of the achievements of the OHR in the area of judicial reform, such as, the estab [...]

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tradition of cultural coexistence – particularly impressive when set against centuries of nearly continuous internecine warfare in Western Europe – offers a compelling lesson for the post-9/11 world, the High Representative and European Union Special Representative, Paddy Ashdown, said today, in the course of a lecture at t [...]