900 beneficiaries received free legal advice;

        over 1,000 beneficiaries received free legal advice through an open phone line;

          93 new court procedures were started;

        149 new administrative procedures were received;

        115 court procedures were positively resolved;

        175 administrative procedures were positively resolved;

        110 court representations by IPC lawyers in Slavonski Brod, Nova Gradiska, Pakrac, Pozega, Beli Manastir, Vukovar, Osijek, Djakovo and Novska.

In 2009, there were 42% less court procedures comparing to previous year, while at the same time number of administrative procedures increased by 45%.

Without pro bono legal services provided by IPC legal staff, potential returnees would not be able to afford the assistance necessary for navigating the often bureaucratic and confusing obstacles government offices put in their path to return.

IPC lawyers are specialized in matters regarding return of private properties, ownership rights, material and non-material damage compensation due to terrorist acts, return of tenancy rights, housing accommodation issues, and different statutory rights of returnees.

Housing accommodation is a returnees’ issue that has been pending for a long time, and the first positive resolutions of such cases occurred in the second half of 2007. IPC has 64 beneficiaries claiming housing accommodation outside the ASSC (areas of special state concern), 18 cases were positively resolved, in 3 procedures beneficiaries withdrew their housing accommodation requests themselves, and finally, in 2 procedures negative decisions were issued. IPC lawyers will pursue further the procedures with negative decisions, first before the Administrative and Constitutional Courts in Croatia, and finally, in case of negative outcome, before the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. IPC has established very good communication with the Regional ASSC Office and IPC staff expects that in the following period, this Office will work even more actively in resolving housing accommodation requests. The remark IPC legal staff can address to the authorities competent in bringing decisions in housing accommodation matters relate mainly to the fact that these authorities have too big discretionary right in making decisions according to their own criteria which is mainly due to the fact that instead of precise laws regulating this issues, there are many programs and regulations which can be interpreted differently, such as Government’s Decision from 2008 and Housing Accommodation Program from 2003. Besides, in many cases, housing accommodation applicants are asked to sign different statements, which IPC legal staff considers to be unlawful and unconstitutional.

The Law on Damage Compensation due to Terrorist Acts and Public Demonstration has been criticized since it became effective in 2003, especially regarding its stipulations on material damages (private houses mined or set to fire during the Domestic War) that should be compensated only according to the Law on Reconstruction which requires numerous conditions to be fulfilled and grants compensation only in limited amounts. Many lawyers and individuals submitted requests for constitutionality estimation of the Law on Damage Compensation… to the Constitutional Court with explanation that basic human rights to equal protection before the law, right to home and private property of owners of mined objects, have been violated by this Law.

However, the Constitutional Court rejected all those requests and confirmed the constitutionality of this Law. Basically, the Constitutional Court considers that equity principle has been satisfied in all aspects, especially since Croatian state still suffers the consequences of the war and therefore the burden should be equally divided among all its citizens. Damaged properties cannot be compensated in its market value but only in its nominal value since the Croatian state does not have financial means for everybody – one law should cover properties destroyed during the war and / or properties destroyed in terrorist acts; it should apply to returnees to Croatia as well as to Croatian war veterans. This is final decision of the Constitutional Court and as such means that the Law on Damage Compensation... remains effective and applicable in practice.

IPC currently has 69 ongoing procedures regarding damage compensation for terrorist acts before Croatian courts and two procedures are before the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. IPC legal staff is waiting for ECHR’s final decisions in order to see how this issue will be finally handled in Croatia.

IPC currently has 222 ongoing reconstruction procedures, out of which 146 cases are in appeal procedure, and the length of these appeal procedures represents the biggest problem in resolving this issue. Additionally, 84 procedures that are ongoing before courts, and are related to determining ownership rights, are directly connected to reconstruction procedures, since IPC beneficiaries will obtain ownership status with final court decisions. IPC has lodged numerous lawsuits before the Administrative Court for “the silence of the administration” of the administrative offices responsible for reconstruction issues, which resulted in an action undertaken by the Administration Court that was addressed towards the Reconstruction Offices, asking them to speed up their decision making process.

It is obvious that the Administrative Court is changing its attitude towards this issue, because IPC has acted in the same way during the previous years, but without any response from the Administrative Court. IPC expects that this trend will continue through 2010, which will greatly accelerate resolution of reconstruction procedures.

IPC currently has 26 ongoing permanent residence procedures and 73 ongoing Croatian citizenship procedures. During 2009, the Law on Foreigners has been significantly changed regarding the status of refugees in Croatia, who came from Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H), for the most part. According to the new addition to the Law, if such persons already have temporary residence status in Croatia for duration of three years, and prior to that they had refugee status for the past 10 years, they will be granted permanent residence in Croatia. With this exception within the Law, a person does not have to reside for five years in Croatia with temporary residence status before receiving Croatian citizenship, which significantly broadens the circle of potential applicants who could apply for Croatian citizenship for humanitarian reasons. 

However, a problem that IPC staff expects to occur in 2010 concerns the refugees who have limited financial means, but who have access to free health care while in refugee status. As soon as such persons apply for temporary residence in Croatia, they will loose the possibility of free health care, and will have obligation to pay 50 EURO per month for health insurance, which means that many refugees will probably decide not to apply for Croatian citizenship and will want to hold on to their refugee status for as long as they can.

Law on Free Legal Aid

Law on Free Legal Aid, which became effective in February 2009, narrows the circle of legal matters for which it is possible to grant legal aid, which is discriminating to many citizens because they will have to pay for legal protection in types of cases which are not covered by the Law. Indigent citizens should not be limited in their access to legal protection at the expense of the state as it represents derogation of their constitutionally guaranteed right of access to courts. It also allows the lawyers' monopoly to be even more strengthened since potential beneficiaries of the Law will have to contact lawyers' office for all legal matters not included in the Law and will therefore have to pay standard lawyers' fees in different proceedings.                                      

One of main objections of everybody who participated in creating this Law, including IPC,  is that there is too much bureaucracy involved in whole procedure. Over 50% of the Law describes the administrative procedure, while in other European countries the administrative procedure takes up only 10% of similar laws. In this way, person seeking free legal aid is sure to face huge administration obstacles from the very beginning of his / hers inquiries for free legal aid. Too much space is left for discretionary judgments of county authorities in state administrative offices.                               

The role of NGOs in providing legal assistance is greatly minimized and limited, which in itself ignores the culture of civil action and respect of human rights. NGOs are limited to providing legal assistance only before administrative offices and advisory assistance, while any assistance before courts, where for the most part all decisions regarding different civil matters and protection of human rights in wider sense, takes place.                 

NGOs can not provide legal aid directly to beneficiaries coming to their office. Prior to that, potential beneficiaries need to obtain a voucher by the County’s State Office that they correspond to criteria for receiving free legal aid according to the Law. Further, the application for free legal aid which potential beneficiaries need to fulfill consists of 9 pages and is almost impossible to fulfill even for the lawyers or university degree population, being so long and complicated, and is especially complicated for the applicants themselves who have no idea how to fill it in with numerous data that is required.

Therefore, during the year 2010, IPC staff will continue its efforts, together with other NGOs providing free legal aid, in order to change and simplify procedures for obtaining free legal aid, and also to find better ways of financing NGOs for their services, and to adjust any future calls for proposal by the Ministry of Justice to standard calls for proposals for civil sector.      

Institute of free legal aid strengthens the process of democratization through realization of equality principle for all physical persons residing in Croatia, regardless of their ethnicity or nationality, but is also very important for harmonization of Croatian laws with EU laws, where institute of free legal aid is very developed.

Socio-economic status of unprivileged individuals represents for them the main obstacle in their access to justice. The expression “right to fair trial” has often been used by the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, as a syntagm including all measures that secure just and fair treatment towards all the persons appearing before courts, which is in accordance to the Article 6 of European Convention on Human Rights.

IPC believes that need for free legal aid in Croatia will not be decreasing over the time, quite the contrary, it will be increasing, due to several reasons: huge crisis the Croatian society is facing, growing unemployment of Croatian population, the fact that almost ¼ of Croatian citizens are considered to be very poor, but also due to the fact that citizens are becoming more and more aware of their rights because of globalization and juridification of society.