SARAJEVO, 23.04.2018. -At the conference “Observing and Equalizing the Judicial Practice in the Field of Defamation”, which was held today in Sarajevo was concluded, inter alia that defamation lawn in BiH need to be expertly analyzed in coordination with the Ministry of Justice BiH and suggest amendments on these laws with the aim to harmonize laws on entity level and level of Brcko Distrikt. Besides, Judiciary content management system (CMS) can be improved by creating technical terms for insight into cases in which one party is a journalist or media.
At the intersectoral meeting organized by the Ministry of Justice BiH, it was pointed out that defamation laws in BiH are most harmonized with the European standards in comparison to other countries in the region. However, unauthorized laws on the entity level and the level of Brcko Distrikt cause unequal judicial practice.
„The Ministry of Justice strongly supports independent and critical journalism, as well as independent judiciary system. Harmonization of court practice would bring all journalists to the same position before the courts“, said Milana Popadić, assistant of the Ministry of JusticeBiH.
Dragiša Jokić,representative of the Department for Information and Communication Technology of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, highlighted that there is no possibility to record journalism profession while entering data into CMS.
„The proposal should be considered for consideration by the Working Group on Strategic Planning and Development of the Automatic Case Management System in Courts and Prosecutors’ Offices“, said Jokić and added that if this improvement of CMS would be adopted than all courts and prosecutors offices in BiH should be informed about this. .
On the conference the need to improve and harmonize court practice in defamation cases, through continuing education of judges, prosecutors and attorneys on the application of standards of the European Court of Human Rights was also highlighted. “Legislative provisions are not detailed and leave space for a rundown interpretation. It is therefore important to improve court practice in accordance with the practice of The ECHR, “said attorney from Banja Luka Oleg Knežić.
General Secretary of the BH Journalists Association pointed out the importance of the willingness of judicial institutions for law harmonization and harmonization of judicial practice at all levels. „There is also a need to consider the method of conducting the expertise or the way of checking the mental pain since there are some illogical opinions of the expert witness“, said Rudić.
Besides, it was noted that for the advancement of court practice it is important to distinguish the value court from the fact and that it is necessary to promote mediation and non-judicial resolution of libel cases.
The conference gathered about 20 representatives of the executive, judiciary, civil society and the media. Association of BH journalists participated in advocacy activities envisaged by previously adopted strategic documents.
We recall that the Council of Ministers BiH tasked the Ministry of Justice of BiH to continuously organize thematic conferences to invite academic community representatives, judges, lawyers, experts from this field, journalists and other interested persons, with a view to reviewing and harmonizing past law enforcement practice in the area of defamation, durring the 116. session that was held in September last year, by recommendations from the report of teh Institution of Ombudsmen for Human rights BiH.