UN Raps Bosnia for Violating War Widow’s Rights

The UN’s Human Rights Committee has said that Bosnia and Herzegovina must find and prosecute those responsible for the disappearance of Salih Dovadzija and allow members of his family “psychological rehabilitation and adequate reparations”, his widow’s legal representative told BIRN on Monday.

“The country is also obligated to stop similar offences in the future and must ensure that information about investigations into enforced disappearances be open and available to families of missing persons,” the committee said in a statement last week.

Sakiba Dovadzija told BIRN that her husband was in the local village guard in Ilijas near Sarajevo in 1992 when he was arrested and detained by Bosnian Serb forces.

After being freed as part of a prisoner exchange, he was mobilised into the Bosnian Army and then arrested for a second time by Bosnian Serb forces, and never seen alive again.

After 23 years, Dovadzija said that the remains of her husband were found in the Pale municipality two months ago.

She decided to file an application to the UN Human Rights Committee in 2012 because she could not get any information about his death or the investigation into the alleged perpetrators, and was not allowed access to his military pension.

“They told me that my Salih was a deserter and that he left his unit without approval. My husband is gone but they won’t allow me access to his pension, without knowing what actually happened to him,” said Dovadzija.

She applied to the UN committee through the Track Impunity Always (TRIAL) NGO, whose legal adviser Adrijana Hanusic-Becirovic said that the key issue was to prove that the state did not do all in its power to find those responsible for the disappearance of Salih Dovadzija.

“The state has an obligation to find out under which circumstances a person disappeared and the Dovadzija family is in a situation in which they are living with constant uncertainty regarding what happened,” said Hanusic-Becirovic.

“They have no information, no right to truth or justice. In this situation, the family is additionally punished by not getting the right to the pension,” she added.

The UN committee said that not allowing the Dovadzija family to receive the pension was “inhumane and degrading”.

Sakiba Dovadzija said that she has called the Ilijas municipality office for veterans and pensions several times but has yet to get a response.

The office also declined to give any explanation to BIRN.