The Erased: Remedying Human Rights Violations

In 1992, 25.671 people who had legal rights to reside in Slovenia were unlawfully deprived of their legal status in Slovenia. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia with its decisions no. U-I-284/94 of 1999 and no. U-I-246/02 of 2003 found the deprivation of their legal status unlawful, and the Aliens Act that the authorities invoked as a legal basis for this measure of erasure unconstitutional. The Court ordered the legislative to remedy the unconstitutionality in a time limit of six months. The decision of the Constitutional Court, however, remained unimplemented for seven years. The goal of the project is to keep reminding the authorities about their constitutional and international obligations to respect the decisions of their highest court and to remedy the violations of human rights, raise awareness of the public about the gravity of the consequences of the erasure and assist the erased people in regulation of the their legal status and other status-related issues.

Project leaders: Neža Kogovšek Šalamon
Project coworkers: Katarina Vučko, Aleksandar Todorović, Maja Ladić, Sara Pistotnik, Uršula Lipovec Čebron, Jelka Zorn and Brankica Petković



Project execution

1. Monitoring of the application of the amendments to the Act Regulating the Legal Status of Cituizens of Other Republics of the Former SFRY in the Republic of Slovenia, and alert the authorities about the encountered shortcomings.
2. Collection of data on circumstances of erasure and its consequences by conducting interviews with the erased people as well as writing and archiving their stories (by ensuring the protection of their personal data).
3. Offering free legal aid to the erased people and representation in administrative and judicial proceedings.
Raising awareness of the public, holding lectures and organizing public events on erasure, its consequences and its contextualization from the perspective of transition, migration, human rights law and constitutional law, nationalism, health, language position and emancipatory practices.

Results

Web site The Erased: Information and documents
At the 20th anniversary of the ‘erasure’ from the register of permanent residence, an act of authorities who in 1992 unlawfully deprived 25.000 people of their legal status, the Peace Institute set up a new website with key information about the erasure, internal instructions used to order the erasure, and its consequences. A special part of the website is dedicated to legal assistance for the erased people as it contains forms and guidelines for regularization of their legal status in Slovenia. This website with content in three languages (Slovenian, English and BHS) was set up to serve the erased people as well as domestic and international public.
Link to the web site: https://www.mirovni-institut.si/izbrisani/en/

Partners:

Amnesty International Slovenia Unione forense per la tutella dei diritti dell'uomo (Italy) Civil Initiative of Erased Activists

Funders:

Open Society Foundations