Annual report on human rights in 2003

The Report of the Helsinki Committee is not intended to comprehensively cover the entire human rights and freedoms situation in the Republic of Macedonia. The analysis and assessments contained in this Report are based on the information available to the Committee, resulting from cases reported to the Committee i.e. registered by the Committee’s monitoring network.

The human rights and freedoms situation in the Republic of Macedonia in 2003 has not undergone significant changes as compared to the previous period. In some spheres (especially the social, health care and the labor relations rights sphere) there are evident retrograde trends. The state has not managed to establish such a system of institutions and mechanisms that would provide for the human rights and freedom protection and promotion and the state is even greatest violator of these rights.
The year 2003 is featured by the completion of the total partization of the state structure, development of ethno-democracy at the expense of civil democracy and further erosion of the law as the basic guarantor of the protection of a person.

Last year none of the declared commitments of the newly elected structure of power was fulfilled (improvement of the security situation in the country, improvement of the economic situation and standard of living of the population, global democratization, respect for the law and development of a state governed by the rule of law, development of integrative instead of disintegrative processes in the Republic of Macedonia and such level of human rights protection and respect for human rights and freedoms that would help the country come close to the European trends and enable its accelerated inclusion in the European structures.