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2017, 21,703 asylum-seekers out of 66,400 had been relocated from Greece, and 11,464 out
of around 35,000 from Italy.
Among the worst offenders were Poland and Hungary, both having refused to accept a single
asylum-seeker from Italy and Greece by the year’s end.
The European Court of Justice rejected Slovakia’s and Hungary’s complaint against the
mandatory refugee relocation scheme. The European Commission also opened infringement
proceedings against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for failing to comply with their
relocation obligations.
CURTAILING ACCESS TO ASYLUM AND PUSHBACKS
Hungary reached a new low by passing legislation allowing pushbacks of all people found in
an irregular situation in the country and by introducing the automatic detention of asylum-
seekers, in blatant breach of EU law. The authorities locked up in containers asylum-seekers
arriving at its borders. Hungary’s systematic flouting of the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers
and migrants also included severely restricting access by limiting admission to two operational
border “transit zones” in which only 10 new asylum applications could be submitted each
working day. This left thousands of people in substandard camps in Serbia, at risk of
homelessness and forcible return further south to Macedonia and Bulgaria.
Abuses and pushbacks continued at the EU external borders, from Bulgaria, Greece, Spain,
and Poland. Poland’s government proposed legislation to legalize pushbacks, a regular
practice at a crossing between Poland and Belarus. In a landmark ruling, the European Court
of Human Rights condemned Spain for breaching the prohibition of collective expulsions and
for violating the right to an effective remedy in the case of two migrants who were summarily
returned from the Spanish enclave of Melilla to Morocco.
Slovenia adopted legislative amendments under which it could deny entry to people arriving
at its borders and automatically expel migrants and refugees who entered irregularly, without
assessing their asylum claims.
FORCED RETURNS
EU member states also continued to put pressure on other governments to accept
readmissions – in some cases without including adequate guarantees against refoulement.
At a time when civilian casualties in Afghanistan were at some of their highest levels on
record, European governments forced increasing numbers of Afghan asylum-seekers back to
the dangers from which they fled in Afghanistan. Forced returns to Afghanistan were made
from countries including Austria, the Netherlands and Norway.
IMPUNITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE
FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia delivered its final judgment on 29
November 2017, bringing to a close its largely successful 23-year effort to hold perpetrators of
war crimes to account. Also in November, it sentenced Bosnian Serb war leader Ratko Mladić
to life imprisonment for crimes under international law, including genocide, war crimes, and
crimes against humanity.
At the national level, with the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which some modest
progress was made, impunity remained the norm, with courts continuing to have limited
capacity and resources, and facing undue political pressure. Prosecutors across the region
lacked the support of the executive and their work was compromised by a climate of
nationalist rhetoric and lack of political commitment to sustained regional co-operation.
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By the end of the year, the authorities had made no progress in establishing the fate of over
11,500 people disappeared during the armed conflicts in the Balkans. Victims of enforced
disappearance and their families continued to be denied access to justice, truth and
reparation. Nominal improvements in the laws regulating reparation for victims of wartime
sexual violence continued to be made in several countries.
DISCRIMINATION
THE “TRADITIONAL VALUES” PRETENCE IN EASTERN EUROPE AND IN
CENTRAL ASIA
Governments across Eastern Europe and across Central Asia continued to prop up repression
and discrimination by promoting and increasingly invoking the rhetoric of a discriminatory
interpretation of so-called “traditional values”. The “traditional values” referred to were
selective xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic interpretations of cultural values. In
Tajikistan, this discourse and its application was used to punish LGBTI communities for
“amoral” behaviours and enforce “norms” for dress code, language and religion primarily
against women and religious minorities, including through new legislation. In Kazakhstan and
Russia, there was an increasing number of criminal prosecutions and other harassment of
religious minorities, on arbitrary grounds, under “anti-extremism” legislation. The said
interpretation assertion of “traditional values” reached a terrifying dimension with the secret
torture and killing of gay men in Chechnya by authorities.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS
Following sexual harassment allegations against US Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and
others in the show business industry, millions of women worldwide used the online hashtag
#MeToo to break the silence about their experiences as survivors of sexual violence. This
became a rallying cry for challenging victim blaming and holding offenders to account. The
year also saw the women’s and feminist movements mobilizing thousands – including during
January’s Women’s Marches across Europe, and Black Monday protests in Poland that
successfully pushed the government not to further restrict access to safe and legal abortion.
Yet, throughout Europe and Central Asia, women and girls continued to experience systemic
human rights violations and abuses, including torture and other ill-treatment, denial of the
right to health and bodily autonomy, inequality of opportunity, and widespread gender-based
violence.
Access to abortion remained criminalized in most circumstances in Ireland and Northern
Ireland and severely restricted in practice. In Poland, there were systemic barriers in accessing
safe and legal abortion. Abortion remained criminalized in all circumstances in Malta.
The EU and Moldova signed the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating
violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention). It was ratified by
Cyprus, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, Norway and Switzerland – bringing to 28 the number of
states to have done so. Ukraine signed it in 2011 but failed to ratify the Convention.
Despite increasingly strong legislative protections, gender-based violence against women
remained pervasive, including in Albania, Croatia and Romania. In Russia, under the cover of
the so-called “traditional values” narrative, and encountering little public criticism, the
Parliament adopted legislation decriminalizing some forms of domestic violence
which President Putin signed into law. In Norway and Sweden, gender-based violence,
including sexual violence, remained a serious problem with inadequate state response.