25.1.2022.The BCHR has the honour to present a new publication: Seven Decades of the Legal Protection of Refugees – Collection of Papers Marking the 70th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

The 70th anniversary of the adoption of one of the key international treaties – the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 2021 – is marked this year. The Collection aims not only to mark the jubilee but also to emphasise the importance of this international treaty, the implementation of which has helped save millions of lives of people who had to or were forced to leave their countries of origin for justified reasons.

The BCHR also published the Collection to mark the first decade of its successful cooperation with the UN’s refugee agency – the UNHCR in Belgrade. Through our joint efforts over the past 10 years, we have helped improve the national asylum and refugee integration system, by providing free legal aid to refugees and asylum seekers in Serbia, organising expert seminars and conferences, and advocating improvements of the legislative framework and the implementation of accepted international refugee law standards.

We also wanted to highlight the importance of UNHCR’s efforts to protect refugees, displaced persons and asylum seekers and recall that this organisation has been extending them assistance in cooperation with other specialised UN agencies, international organisations and local partners for seventy years now. The Republic of Serbia is a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. It has also ratified many other international treaties protecting human rights and particularly vulnerable categories of people. Serbia’s Constitution also devotes many articles to the protection and improvement of human rights. By adopting the Asylum Act in 2008, Serbia established the legal framework for the protection of refugees through the asylum procedure and provided them with the possibility of obtaining international protection and integrating in Serbia’s society.

The publication “Seven Decades of Legal Protection of Refugees” is available for download here in Serbian.