INTERVIEW-Bosnian experience to help UN human rights fight
18 May 2007 14:19:25 GMT Source: Reuters
By Nedim Dervisbegovic SOFIA, May 18 (Reuters) - Bosnia will use its newly won seat on the top U.N. human rights body to help prevent widespread rights violations like those in its 1992-95 war from happening elsewhere, Foreign Minister Sven Alkalaj said on Friday. The Balkan state, born out of the conflict in which at least 100,000 Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats were killed, was elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday at the expense of Belarus, whose bid Washington strongly opposed. The General Assembly elected Bosnia and fellow ex-Yugoslav republic Slovenia to two vacant Eastern European seats on the 47-seat council. "This is very important for Bosnia because Bosnia has a lot to say in that body," Alkalaj told Reuters in Sofia on the sidelines of a meeting of the Central European Initiative, a regional cooperation body. The former Yugoslavia collapsed in the 1990s in a series of conflicts in which "ethnic cleansing" campaigns against rival groups killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions. The bloodiest act of violence was the July 1995 Bosnian Serb massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males in the U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. The top U.N. court ruled in February that this crime was genocide. "Bosnia has credibility, on the basis of what happened, to be a mouthpiece so that this is never repeated anywhere else in the world," Alkalaj said. "This is the main message that the countries around the world recognised and this was decisive for Bosnia to get such big support (in the U.N. vote)," Alkalaj said. The election to the Council places extra responsibility on Bosnia to deal with ongoing human rights violations, such as discrimination against refugees returning to now ethnically homogeneous areas of the country, Alkalaj said. "We will definitely dedicate a lot of attention to the problems at home and sort out the situation so we can have a credible voice about world problems," he said. Physical attacks have decreased in recent years but returnees face employment, social and healthcare discrimination, and some are wary about going back because many war crimes perpetrators have not faced justice yet. Human rights groups urged Bosnia last week to respect the rights of about 400 foreign-born ex-Islamic volunteers who fought in the war. Stripped of Bosnian citizenship, they face deportation to countries of origin where they may face abuse. "A plan for these activities still needs to be drawn up but none of these problems will be left out. They will all be analysed so we can start solving them," Alkalaj said.
