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About ethnic discrimination at the meeting between ethnic communities and the Ombudsman of Bosnia and Herzegovina


In February the Human Rights' Ombudsman Matjaž Hanžek hosted his counterpart from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Frank Orton: http://www.ohro.ba/articles_ba/article.php?lit_id=ombud_ba

At the Office of the Human Rights' Ombudsman we took the opportunity to prepare a meeting with representatives of more than 20 ethnic communities living in Slovenia. The ethnic communities, including Germans, Serbs, Macedonians, Bosnians, Croatians and Romanians informed the two Ombudsmen of their problems.
The Slovenian Ombudsman Matjaž Hanžek stressed that ignorance about people that are different to us causes fear and intolerance towards other people. He said that latent conflict between ethnic groups in Slovenia is present and that it could only be solved by constant learning about differences among us.
Mr Frank Orton welcomed the idea of a working group for ethnic minorities, which has also been endorsed by one of the United Nations resolutions. He appealed to his guests not to be content simply with statements from the authorities that they are aware of the problems of ethnic minorities and that it is important for them to be regularly notified of these problems; rather, the state should be forced to begin to address them. "Generally speaking, when it comes to human rights there are too many fine words, reports or conventions, and far too little focus on implementing already adopted documents." warned Mr Orton.

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