Major legal obstacle to return eliminated

OHR decision to resolve injustice in property rights

On 14 april 1999, High Representative Carlos Westendorp issued a decision cancelling all permanent occupancy rights issued in the Federation and Republika Srpska during and after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This decision resolves the most substantial injustice in the field of property rights. The Decision is taken with the advice and support of numerous international and local organisations, including the OSCE, UNHCR and the Federation Ombudsmen.

In both Entities, tens of thousands of socially-owned apartments have been taken away from their original occupants, under the laws and administrative practices concerning abandoned property. In the Federation, provisions of the Law on Abandoned Apartments, which came into effect on December 22, 1995, required all displaced persons to return to their apartments within 6 days, and all refugees to return within 15 days. These time limits were impossible to comply with, as at the time, some 1.2 million citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina were abroad as refugees, and approximately 1 million were internally displaced. Although this Law was widely condemned by international and local observers as a violation of the Dayton Agreement and international human rights standards, it was nonetheless used by local authorities to cancel permanently the occupancy rights of many thousands of people.

After the rights of the original occupants were cancelled under this Law, the authorities could reallocate the apartments to any person they chose. This took place in an arbitrary and often illegal fashion. Most of the individuals who received these apartments were not genuine displaced persons, who usually received only temporary permits. Instead the apartments were permanently reallocated to chosen individuals to improve their housing situation. In the major cities, in particular Sarajevo, Mostar and Banja Luka, many original residents of the city moved to better apartments, and obtained a permanent contract on use. In some cases, they also kept possession of their original housing. Later, the decisions on reallocation were back-dated in order to avoid the requirements of the new laws. The result of this practice is the widespread misallocation of housing which now makes the return of displaced persons and refugees so difficult.

Free movement of students and workers in BiH

Streamlining technical schools, and adapting skills to the labour market

Before it disintegrated, Yugoslavia had a very centralised education system with one ministry responsible for the entire country. Now the situation is totally different. In Bosnia-Herzegovina alone there are now two education ministries, one for Republika Srpska and one for the Federation. However the power of the second of these two institutions is actually fairly limited as each of the Federation's 10 cantons has its own education ministry. In Mostar, things are even more complicated. Because it is a 'mixed' canton, the region has two education departments.

This set-up means that Bosnia now has a fiendishly complicated education system with differing approaches to teaching adopted in different parts of the country. This lack of a coherent education policy is particularly evident in Bosnia's technical colleges, which train children from the age of 14 years onwards to take up professions such as cooks, electricians, joiners, tailors or administrative assistants.

The European Commission is currently financing a two-year programme in Bosnia that designed to introduce a series of coherent and realistic reforms into the country's vocational education and training (VET) system and it is concentrating its efforts on the technical schools. If successful, the VET programme should help to ensure that qualifications awarded in one school are recognised throughout the country and that pupils receive training that is better adapted to the needs of the labour market.

The European Commission has already supported this kind of reform programme in other central European countries including the Czech Republic. In the past, countries in the region operated centrally planned economies and students were often trained with a very specific job in mind. Part of a person's training would take place in one of the large state-run industries where they would probably end up working. Things are very different in Western countries. Labour market development is so rapid that what students really need are "transferable skills" that are not connected to a specific job. Pupils need to master a number of "core skills" that can be subsequently adapted to the different jobs they may be asked to do. One of VET's aims is to develop a new curriculum in Bosnia that is better suited to the needs of the labour market.

But VET also aims to introduce other reforms into the technical schools including new moves towards inter-entity and inter-ethnic cooperation. This is no easy task in a country where decisions concerning education policy are taken at so many different levels. The VET project currently brings together 40 key actors from numerous national, regional and local government departments including the Ministries of Education, Labour and Finance, employment services, pedagogical institutes, local labour offices and vocational and technical schools. The Federation (including all Cantons) and Republika Srpska are represented and the 40 key actors have participated in workshops, seminars and study tours in European Union countries in a bid to develop a joint understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their respective systems.

The VET group is expected to unveil an action plan for reforming the technical schools by the end of 1999.

VET is also supporting some very specific actions including organising practical training for unemployed people in northwest Bosnia. A total of 27 classes have been organised on such diverse subjects as building and computing. Lessons are provided by local private companies, NGOs working in the region and technical schools. Usual class sizes vary between twenty and thirty students and up to now almost 500 people have taken advantage of the scheme.

VET e-mail: phare@soros.org.ba

Europe for BiH
Quarterly newsletters published by the European Commission on its actions in Bosnia and Herzegovina
No 7, June 1999

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