Issues

 

Human rights

This meeting is planned to last two days (followed by seminars and workshops in the next two days), and to be held in Zagreb, Croatia, with 37 project participants. The plan is that all participants give summaries of their specific topics with putting an accent on human rights point of view in each case. There is also planned that 7 project participants from Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia (Prof. Aleksandar Molnar, Dr Vladimir Djeric, Dr Dusan Pavlovic, Prof. Nebojsa Vucinic, Prof. Gvozden Flego, Prof. Zarko Puhovski, Prof. Miomir Matulovic), articulate the final project results, concerned with comparative and structural analyses of institutional framework, of socioeconomic transformation, and of political culture and civil society development in Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia from the human rights perspective.
Human rights are maybe the most important part of democratic constitutional state. That is why they must be taken into account in every serious investigation of the constitutional development. In our research human rights should serve as both analytical and normative point of departure in exploration of political institutions, socioeconomic conditions and political culture.
The analysis of the situation of human rights in FRY and Croatia should be grounded upon data collected by different methods and divided into the three parts. In the first part constitutional, legal and administrative provisions on human rights in FRY and Croatia should be described, analyzed and compared to the international human rights standards. The second part would deal with the actual practice, i. e. with the de facto respect to and enjoyment of human rights in FRY and Croatia. Finally, the third part would be devoted to the attitudes (consciousness) of citizens of FRY and Croatia towards their own rights and the rights of their compatriots.
In all three of the above-mentioned sections of analysis, special attention will be paid to the problem of minority rights, due to three principal reasons. First, all post-Yugoslav countries are ethnically heterogeneous, which is the fact that has to be observed from both analytical and normative perspective. Secondly, a peculiar chauvinistic perspective on the ´majority´-´minority´ relations triggered all recent Yugoslav wars, producing the well-known tragic consequences. Thirdly, no effort aimed at establishment of democratic normalcy in the analyzed countries can be made feasible unless it includes legal-institutional recognition of the special rights and the special status of those who are in all constellations destined to remain in minority. For these reasons, the empirical research will be conducted in both countries.
On the basis of the investigation findings, a comparison could be made of the respect of human rights in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) and the status of human rights in the FRY and Croatia. Relevant data on the SFRY can be found in the reports of Charles Humana, based on research conducted worldwide in the field of human rights in 1983, 1986 and 1991. A special feature of this research effort was its quantitative data-processing approach, thus enabling an exact determination of the state of human rights in each country and a comparison with the situation in other countries, as well as with the global state of affairs in this respect.
There is also the Belgrade Center for Human Rights Report about human rights in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1998, which yielded data using Humana's methodology (though this time the data base was incomparably richer, better systematized and more reliable than in 1983, 1986 and 1991). That is why this report provides another valuable source for comparison.
The investigation findings could help us to see whether there are any truly substantive changes in the situation of human rights in institutional and social-economic field, as well as in the field of political culture, concerning the territories of former SFRY (nowadays FRY and Croatia) over the past quarter of a century and involving two political systems (communist and post-communist). They could also high light the most endangered human rights in both countries and lead all social and political actors who will be using them to identify the fields where their educational and political activities are to be directed to. In that context, the question of minority rights regulation and its improvement will get special consideration.