16 June 2014 - Members of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disapearances, Mr. Ariel Dulitzky, President (Argentina), Mr. Ossman El-Hajje, Vice president (Lebanon) and two members of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visited the Constitutional Court today, where they were received by Dr Snježana Bagić, Vice-president and Judges Slavica Banić, Dr Miroslav Šeparović and Antun Palarić.
The Working Group was established by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1980 to assist families in determining the fate and whereabouts of disappeared relatives. It endeavours to establish a channel of communication between the families and the Governments concerned, to ensure that individual cases are investigated, with the objective of clarifying the whereabouts of persons who, having disappeared, are placed outside the protection of the law. It also provides assistance in the implementation by States of the UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
The talks were held about relations between the Croatian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights (EtCHR), where it was emphasised that in its work our Court regularly applies the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and the case-law of the EtCHR. On the principle level addressed were also trials in absentia and statute of limitations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The working group praised Croatia's endeavours in finding mass grave sites and thanked for the fruitful cooperation.
