The Working Group of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare (MLSW) charged with preparing the text of the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Veterans and Disability Protection, and whose task was to also propose a solution for the social protection of and compensation for civilian victims of the wars of the 1990s by 1 March, has not yet finished its work.

Minister of Labour and Social Welfare Naida Nišić informed the Human Rights Action (HRA) about this yesterday, noting that the public will be “informed in due time” about all the amendments and supplements to the text of the Law.

The HRA asked the Ministry when the draft amendments to the Law will be presented to the public, considering that the deadline for their completion expired almost a month ago.

We remind that, after the proposal of the people’s deputies from the New Serbian Democracy (NSD), the Democratic People’s Party and the Democrats, who proposed that only victims of the armed conflict with NATO in Montenegro should be viewed as civilian victims of the war, and not those from Montenegro who were killed in the armed conflicts in Croatia, BiH or in Kosovo, the HRA, the Association “Štrpci – Against Forgetting” and the Bosniak Council staged a protest in front of the National Assembly towards the end of last year, on 29 December, requesting that the discriminatory law be withdrawn from the parliamentary procedure and that a new, comprehensive solution be prescribed instead.

On the same day, at the session of the Assembly, the head of the NSD parliamentary group Slaven Radunović said that he was withdrawing the draft of the Law so that by 1 March 2024, the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare could offer a solution that would satisfy a wider range of people and be fairer in the attempt to include all victims. He also said that, if the Ministry fails to present its Draft Law by 1 March, the representatives of the parliamentary groups will propose their own, no later than by 1 June 2024.

The Human Rights Action submitted a proposed solution to the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare on 26 January 2024.