Victims support in Serbia was established to support victims of war crimes, child victims, victims of people trafficking and victims of sexual violence but there was no support for victims who had suffered domestic violence, property crime, assault or robbery. This led to victims visiting courts to try and find out information about their case, often up to 10 times, they were unaware of their rights as a victim of crime or how to access specialist support. This led to poor levels of confidence and satisfaction in the justice system, cases often failed because of length of time to process the case and prosecutors were often distracted by victims unexpectedly arriving at the court looking for information.
In 2015 an Agencia project team worked with the Higher Prosecutorial Council in Serbia to design a pilot scheme at the Higher Court in Belgrade to improve services to victims of crime. The key elements were to establish a victim information unit in the court, to ensure that victims were better informed of their rights and obligations and to ‘signpost’ victims requiring specialist support to NGO’s who provided those services.
The project team co-ordinated with OSCE and the US Embassy who were delivering projects to improve support to victims of war crimes, people trafficking and gender-based violence and working in co-ordination with the Victimology Society of Serbia and over 20 NGO service providers across Serbia, a service directory was produced. The project team undertook a survey of court users to identify key service improvement requirements and a follow up survey after 6 months of the pilot identified what had worked well.
After presenting the findings to the Minister of Justice, support for an expansion of the scheme to all four major cities in Serbia was agreed and the project team developed the national implementation plan.
The project culminated with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Minister of Justice, the British Ambassador and the Victimology Society of Serbia to implement the national plan.
