Human Rights In Serbia Essay

Human rights have been a longstanding and important issue that the UN has been addressing since its inception. One particular country of unrest is Serbia, where history has led to some unpleasant political situations and, as a result, severe human rights issue have arisen. Serbia – landlocked between Bosnia and Herzegovina on the West and Romania on the East – is a historically complex and very new country. Serbia only became separate from Moldova and Kosovo as recently as 2006 and 2008 respectively. Constant political distress has proven difficult to maintain an appropriate human rights code without high degrees of exploitation, especially during the breakup of Yugoslavia. It is the various human rights issues in Serbia that will be examined in this paper, looking to the UN for support and to head in the right direction.

In the past two decades, there has been much turmoil throughout Serbia, and without any consistency or certainty for the nation, it has led to frustration and anger for the people. They have an unfortunate past of Human Rights violations and particular regions, such as Vojovodina, have been placed on Human Rights Watch by the European Parliament. Many of these issues began with the ethnic cleanings issues during the war in Bosnia. After June of 1999, International Red Cross identified 150,000 Serbs who had fled from terror, intimidation and primarily ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Metohija, a province of Serbia. Only about 6,000 people have been able to return home since, making Serbia Europe’s country with the most refugees. The UN is in the process of trying to get as many of these people to return as possible, but efforts have proved difficult. In addition, in this same province, nearly 1,000 Ser...

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... a fair trial. Detention without trial became quite prevalent after the September 11 attacks when the war on terrorism began. It hopes that potential criminals will confess to acts of terrorism or other crimes; however, this has rarely proved an effective method. (Detention without charge) It is an inhumane method of interrogation and often not worth the trouble. The poster child for atrocious detention without trial is Guantanamo Bay run by the United States. Its horrific torture methods including isolation, humiliation and even sexual abuse are known to the world, putting out an offside message to the rest of the world and countries struggling with their freedom, such as Serbia (everybody in Guantanamo has been tortured). It is this sort of abuse that cannot and should not be tolerated, especially by superpower countries with influence on smaller nations.