Serbia The Case of ‘Missing Babies’ in Serbia before the European Court of Human Rights

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In the case of Zorica Jovanovic v. Serbia, initiated before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in April 2008, the applicant complained of the continuing failure by the Serbian authorities to provide her with any information about the real fate of her son, who had allegedly died while in the care of a state-run hospital, or indeed with any other redress. Not only did the ECtHR decide that the applicant's right to family life guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention was violated, but it also held that the respondent state must, within a year from the date on which the judgment became final, take all appropriate measures, preferably by means of a lex specialis, to secure the establishment of a mechanism aimed at providing individual redress to all parents in a situation such as, or sufficiently similar to, the applicant's. 2 It is important to emphasise that hers was not a single case. According to some information, there are around 1,500 reported cases of babies missing from maternity wards, although there is no data on the exact number of cases. State authorities in Serbia, however, had still done nothing either to investigate and prosecute those cases or to adopt legal mechanisms to resolve them.

THE CASE OF ZORICA JOVANOVIC v. SERBIA

To begin with, I will summarise the facts of the only case against Serbia regarding the issue of missing babies. At the end of October 1983, Zorica, the applicant, gave birth to a healthy baby boy in a state-run hospital in Ć uprija, a town in central Serbia. For the next two days, she had contact with her baby on a regular basis, and on the second day doctors informed her that both she and her baby would be discharged the next day since her son had no medical problems. The following morning the duty doctor told Zorica that her son had died. In a state of shock and disbelief, she quickly went to the room where new-born babies are located, hoping to see her son.