20 Mar Enforcement of Judgment Zorica Jovanovic v. Serbia

The Human Rights Director of the Council of Europe received the State Secretary of the Ministry of Justice of Serbia, at the margins of the CMDH meeting (3-5 March). Serbian Parliament adopted on 29 February the law setting up an investigation mechanism to establish the fate of “missing babies” in response to the European Court’s judgment in Zorica Jovanović (21794/08, 09/09/2013).

In the case of Zorica Jovanovic, the applicant claimed that her child did not die 72 hours after giving birth (in 1983), but that it had been unlawfully taken away during her stay at the Ćuprija Health Center. The European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) noted that in the present case, the applicant has never been given his body or informed of where he is allegedly buried, that the cause of death had never been determined, that the applicant had never received an autopsy report and his death was never officially recorded. The applicant’s criminal complaint was dismissed without due consideration and the applicant was not provided with credible information about what had happened to her son. The ECtHR pointed out that the new regulations and rules adopted, have implications only for the future, and has effectively offered nothing to those parents, including the applicant, who have endured the ordeal in the past. Accordingly, the ECtHR found that the applicant that has suffered a continuing violation of the right to respect for her family life on account of the respondent State’s continuing failure to provide her with credible information as to the fate of her son.

The ECtHR noted that hundreds of parents whose newborn babies had “gone missing” following their alleged deaths in hospital wards between the 1970s and the 1990s applied to the Serbian Parliament seeking redress. In view of such significant numbers of potential applicants, the Court held that the respondent State must, within one year from the date on which the present judgment becomes final  take all appropriate measures, to secure the establishment of a mechanism aimed at providing individual redress to all parents in a situation such as, or sufficiently similar to, the applicant’s. 

The Human Rights Director welcomed this positive development and thanked the Serbian authorities for their relentless efforts to ensure adoption of the law, including the consultations with parents at the initiative of the Prime Minister of Serbia. It was highlighted that the priority now should be ensuring the Convention compliant and effective implementation of the law in order to end the plight of parents of “missing babies”. The authorities were called on to rapidly take the necessary practical measures to ensure:

• the efficient implementation of the new fact-finding mechanism, in particular through conducting an awareness-raising campaign to alert possible victims about that mechanism and the 6-month deadline;
• the setting-up of the DNA database to facilitate the truth-seeking process;
• and the training of investigating judges and police who would deal with cases of “missing babies”.

Read the Committee of Ministers’ decision

https://search.coe.int/cm/Pages/result_details.aspx?ObjectId=09000016809cc921

References from the website of the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights