Serbia has implemented 90 per cent of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, although it has not yet adopted the Law on Missing Babies, notes the Council of Europe that controls the implementation of these decisions.

This is why, at the meeting of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, from December 4 to 6 r, the agenda was set to solve the issue of missing babies legally and institutionally in accordance with the execution of the 2013 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, in which the Court ruled in favor of Zorica Jovanovic.

On March 8, the Serbian government sent a proposition on “missing babies” to the Serbian Parliament, but it has not yet been adopted.

In a statement by the Council of Europe, it was recalled that in March of this year, the Committee of Ministers invited Serbia to adopt the aforementioned law as soon as possible, but that in the meantime the Serbian authorities did not provide the Council with new information in this regard.

The decision of the Committee of Ministers on this matter is expected to be taken on the last day of the session, on Thursday, December 6, according to a statement.

The Council of Europe’s monitoring body in March called on the authorities in Serbia to take all necessary measures to adopt the Law on Missing Babies in order to introduce a mechanism for providing indemnity compensation to all parents of “missing” babies and to approach it as a matter of the highest priority.

The Committee considers that the adoption of the Law is absolutely necessary for parents of missing persons to receive information on the fate of children, as well as individual indemnity.

An order for the legal and institutional resolution of the issue of missing babies was issued by the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg in 2013 in a verdict on the case of Zorica Jovanovic, in whose favor the Court judged.

With that decision, Serbia ordered to pay 10,000 euros of compensation and court costs to Zorica Jovanovic, because even after 30 years, the state failed to explain what happened to her baby, who was born healthy at the clinic in Cuprija in October 1983, and then three days later died.

An explanation was never offered to the mother, nor was she allowed to see the child’s body, and the authorities failed to find either the baby’s death certificate or the results of the autopsy, and lawsuits against the clinic staff were denied as unfounded.