Together with our member, Civic Initiatives (CI), we present the 2023 annual report on the civil society environment in Serbia.
The environment for CSOs in Serbia faces persistent challenges, with ongoing threats to fundamental freedoms and rights. Attacks on civil society leaders remain unaddressed, while funding continues to flow to organizations with questionable ties to the authorities. The legal environment remains non-transparent, with arbitrary decisions and laws that restrict freedom of expression and promote state control over the media. Police actions during protests have raised concerns about the right to peaceful assembly. CSOss face increasing pressure from smear campaigns and restrictive laws. Recommendations include holding accountable those responsible for attacks, reforming funding systems, and improving the legal framework to support civil society development and service provision.
Below, we present you the key findings and key recommendations:
KEY FINDINGS:
- Violation of fundamental freedoms is one of the strongest findings of this report. Numerous recorded cases of violations of freedom of association, expression and assembly were recorded. Violations of human rights were particularly intensified during the pre-election and post-election period in December 2023. Targeting campaigns were a daily occurrence, directed against critical media, activists and CSOs, and orchestrated attacks start from the top of the state and later spread to pro-government media.
- During 2023, the problem of abuse of rights through SLAPP lawsuits, which target journalists, but also activists and the civil sector, are facing en masse, was highlighted.
- Different domestic and international reports assess a non-favorable framework for individual and corporate giving. There are no proper tax benefits underlying the further growth of giving. Implementation of existing incentives is not unique and different practices of the competent authorities in this regard are present. The definition of public interest is inconsistent in Law on Associations and tax laws. There is no system for collecting data on donations from citizens and businesses.
- Although there is a framework for transparent state funding, it still contains certain gaps, which allow for the prescribed procedures, and particularly the political influence on the final decisions. The state funding for CSOs in Serbia was one of the initial reasons for increasing GONGO activities and several such cases have been reported. In addition to GONGO organizations, phantom organizations are becoming more common, and through open calls, boasting connections with committee members, they receive huge sums of money. This threatens the survival of those organizations that actually work on important social issues. During the year 2023, examples of misuse of huge sums of public money were recorded through open calls by awarding them to phantom organizations.
- The legal framework still does not stimulate volunteering, does not acknowledge the value of volunteer engagement, and does not enable the collection and analysis of data on volunteers and volunteer hours.
- Although certain changes in the legal framework have been observed, they are not qualitative and do not address the problem of limited influence in the decision-making process. Due to the focus of the EU on quantitative criteria, a trend of faking public participation and debates was observed, with strong GONGOs activities.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS:
- Consistently implement laws and by-laws in freedom of association, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression at all state levels to defend achieved standards in the legal framework, as well as strengthening the accountability of all relevant institutions responsible for the protection of fundamental rights.
- Establish a mechanism to protect human rights defenders. Due to the multiple threatened position of human rights defenders, it is necessary to work on establishing the mechanisms of their protection from physical and verbal attacks and targeting that occur equally in public and online space.
- Strategically approach and develop anti-SLAPP mechanisms to protect journalists, media and activists from malicious lawsuits, especially through defending achieved standards in terms of a lack of criminal responsibility for defamation.
- Establish an effective mechanism of internal control and sanctioning of excessive use of force and police brutality.
- Establish a mechanism to prevent the abuse of regulations and standards in the field of prevention of money laundering and harmonize the work of the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing with the standards prescribed by the FATF.
- Provide a stronger political label for philanthropy with stronger incentives for corporative giving, introducing incentives for individual giving, and harmonization of public interest between different laws as well as establishing a system for collecting data.
- Develop a system for effective and regular collection of data on all types of state funding and take other steps to improve the transparency and regularity of open calls and ensure effective elimination of conflicts of interest. Develop an online database with all data on open calls intended for associations.
- Develop additional qualitative criteria for participating in decision making processes based on expertise and public interest contribution as well establishing a system for effective regular collecting data.
- Implement public policy documents around creating an enabling environment for the development of civil society.
- Ensure the status of social service providers to CSOs in all relevant fields including equalizing their status with other actors in the field. Improvement of the legal system is also needed in the parts related to the criteria for awarding the service contracts and clear monitoring and evaluation procedures.
This report is part of a series of country reports covering six countries in the Westerns Balkans: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Türkiye.
This report has been produced with the support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
Interested in reading more? Find the full report HERE.