East - East Partnership Beyond Borders Program: Croatia 

Institutional partner: Human Rights Center
Program Coordinator: Maja Hasanbašić  

 

Zagreb, December 22, 2006    

The Human Rights Center will start to implement its duties as the Institutional partner for the East - East: Partnership Beyond Borders Program in Croatia for the first time in the year 2007.  

We created this vision in line with our extensive experience in a broadly based approach to human rights, as well as the Centers' past efforts in strengthening cooperation between governmental institutions, civil society organizations, international organizations and academic institutions in the field of human rights protection, while simultaneously having in mind actual needs, knowledge and skills of Croatian civil society organizations. Finally, while drafting this vision, we were seeking to explore the possibilities of international exchange, which could bring benefits to all sides, Croatian civil society organizations and civil society organizations from other countries, members of the East-East network.

  We identified four mayor fields that are in line with the Centers' general mission and which we find most relevant for putting into a broad international perspective:    

1)    The Influence of the EU Accession Process on the State of Human Rights with a special emphasis on anti discrimination, the rights of national minorities, corruption and transparency

  This strategic priority is to be performed in line with the Subprogram for European Integration, which prioritizes cooperation among new EU member states, candidate, potential candidate countries and the EU eastern neighbors. As Croatia is a candidate country, the issue of the implications of this process on the state of human rights in Croatia becomes ever more important.   The HRC is currently conducting an important research project about the effects of EU accession on human rights in Croatia. On the one hand, Croatian EU accession opens up a new window of opportunity for advocacy of higher human rights standards and practice in Croatia, such as anti-discrimination legislation and practice, effective and impartial judiciary and public administration, as well as better transparency.  All of these efforts are crucial element in the fight against corruption. At the legal level, Croatia has higher standards of protection of national minorities, than the EU average. However, in practice there are still violations of national minority rights, specially of the Serb and Roma minority. The findings of this research efforts as well as our overall experience with the EU in the coming years can be of great value to other countries in the region of Southeast Europe and beyond. On the other hand, Croatia could learn from the experience as well as adopt best practices from the new EU member states.        

2)    Education in Human Rights and Civic Education and level of its integration within the Educational System  

This theme has been of strategic priority to the Center for a long time period. The fact is that Croatian civil society organizations have great experience and knowledge in non-formal education about anti discrimination, human rights, non-violence and other related themes. On the other hand there is no systematic and obligatory anti-bias education about human rights, tolerance and diversity integrated within the cycles of the Croatian official educational system: primary, secondary and high education. Civic Education is also not incorporated into the mainstream curricula. Following up to the UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004), The Vienna Conference recommended that States should "... direct education towards the full development of the human personality and the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms" and called on all States to include human rights, humanitarian law, democracy and rule of law as subjects in the curricula of all learning institutions in formal and non-formal settings. The fact that we live in increasingly multicultural societies underlines the importance of learning to live together. This value should be the core idea of education. The Center is the initiator of the initial expert discussion about the level of integration of human rights into the curricula of Law Faculties in Croatia, which we will organize at the beginning of this year, in cooperation with relevant professors from the Faculty of Law.    

3)    The Right to a Healthy Environment and Sustainable Development  

This theme is becoming more and more important within the field of human rights protection. It has been recognized as a third generation human right, which is directly related to the right to a health, since environmental damage has direct impact on health. However, this is also related to the need to have NGOs and civic initiatives that criticize various international energy-related and other projects run by official politics. One of the biggest challenges facing NGOs today is educating people to take an active role in their communities, which goes from raising environmental awareness to concrete actions aiming to preserve healthy and sustainable environments and biodiversity.  Some Croatian civil society organizations have achieved excellent results in fighting for their environment through establishing networks and cooperation with relevant experts and mobilizing public support. On the other hand, there is a need for continuous education within this theme and international cooperation, since environmental issues have impacts both locally and globally. The HRC would like to strengthen the international and regional aspect of this theme through the East-East Program.     

4)    Gender Equality  

This strategic priority is in our continuous focus since the rights of women have not been fulfilled in all aspects of life. The fact is that the legal and institutional framework for gender equality in Croatia is quite developed, while its implementation in practice needs to be carried out more systematically. Further actions should be taken in the fields of labor market work place, politics and in the field of violence against women, although there has been a significant improvement in the reaction of the police to cases of violence against women. There is also a great need to introduce gender sensitive education within the Croatian official educational system. Women's NGOs in Croatia and other institutions working in the field of gender equality are very active both in activism and theoretical analyses, and could share good practices within the East-East network.