The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights presents its 2023 Human Rights in Serbia Report on Tuesday, 9 April 2024.
The two mass shootings in early May marked the entire year and again demonstrated the deep crisis pervading Serbia’s society. On 3 May, a 13-year-old pupil of the Belgrade primary school Vladislav Ribnikar shot dead nine of his classmates and the school guard and wounded another six pupils and a teacher. Just one day later, a 21-year-old man killed eight and wounded 14 people in the villages of Malo Orašje and Dubona near Mladenovac. The state authorities’ inadequate response to the tragedies prompted fierce large-scale civic protests demanding that they take urgent steps to counter increasingly frequent violence in many walks of life, and the hate speech and violence promoted by some pro-regime media.
The violence in Serbia’s society is the logical consequence of the narrative of violence, often coming from the topmost public officials and representatives of institutions, which has inundated the public sphere and perpetuated tensions and conflict.
The separation of powers principle was teetering on its last legs – the executive has practically taken primacy over the other two branches, while the head of state exercised powers exceeding his constitutionally defined remit. Judicial inefficiency eroded public trust in the courts, with people increasingly turning to alternative ways of protecting their rights. The work of the National Assembly in 2023 was characterised by numerous abuses of parliamentary rules.
Yet another round of elections was held in the 2023, although less than two years had passed since the previous one. The elections were scheduled at all three levels – for the national, Vojvodina and a number of local (including Belgrade city) parliaments – for 17 December. The entire election process was accompanied by numerous irregularities the judicial institutions failed to respond to.
Together with six other European countries, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece and the United Kingdom, Serbia remained in the category of countries in which fundamental freedoms are obstructed on the CIVICUS Index. CIVICUS said that Serbia’s civic space has drastically been narrowed and that individuals and organisations criticising the authorities were threatened.
Media professionals, notably those critical of the government, have been subjected to increasing pressures, as well as attacks and insults. Independent outlets and journalists have been the targets of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), filed by plaintiffs claiming huge damages. Serbia ranks 10th on the list of European countries with the highest number of SLAPPs documented since 2010 (28), according to database of the Coalition against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE).
Serbia was among the European countries with the highest risk of poverty and social exclusion, and among ten of those with the highest social inequality. In other words, the wealthiest 20% of the population had six times higher income than the poorest 20%. Data showing that absolute poverty in Serbia stands at 7% of the overall population are worrying.
Serbia slipped from 23rd to 38th place on the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index year on year, according to WEF’s 2023 report. Women in Serbia were still unequal in the area of economic opportunity and faced greater obstacles than men when entering and re-entering the labour market. Discrimination, education, gender blind/neutral policies, the gap between education and job market demands and balancing private and professional life were some of the main causes of unemployment among women in Serbia. Twenty-eight women were victims of domestic violence in Serbia in 2023.
The situation of persons with disabilities in Serbia remained extremely difficult. The implementation of many of the activities envisaged in the action plans for the implementation of the Strategy for Improving the Situation of Persons with Disabilities was delayed, while the adoption of the first action plan for the implementation of the Strategy on Deinstitutionalisation and the Development of Community Services, which was adopted in 2022, remained pending at the end of 2023.
Serbia ranked 26th as regards respect for the human rights and full equality of the LGBTI population according to the latest ILGA-Europe survey, i.e. it slid three places over 2022.
The 2023 Report is BCHR’s 26th annual report on the human rights situation in our country. Like its predecessors, it provides a comprehensive overview of the human rights situation and the main developments, trends and phenomena in most walks of life that affected it.
The translation and publication of the 2023 Human Rights in Serbia Report was supported by the Embassy of United States of America in Serbia. The views expressed in the Report are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Embassy in Serbia.
