INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO KURIC AND OTHERS V. SLOVENIA & KURIC AND OTHERS V. SLOVENIA (JUST SATISFACTION) (EUR. CT. H.R.)

摘要

The dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) brought in its wake massive bloodshed, as well as human rights violations not seen on the European continent since the end of the Second World War. It probed the boundaries of contemporary international law in numerous ways, including providing the first "field tests" of the doctrine of "responsibility to protect," which may turn out to be the biggest challenge to the notion of state sovereignty posed in centuries. The dissolution of the SFRY also brought about dislocations of a less dramatic, but, perhaps to those affected, a no less significant sort. Under the laws of the former SFRY, an individual became a citizen of one of the six constituent Republics by birth or naturalization and thereupon also acquired citizenship in the Federal Republic. There were no restrictions or limitations on the movement of individuals from one Republic to another, or on the rights of people who were citizens of a Republic different from the one in which they happened to reside. All of that changed when the SFRY disintegrated and the newly-independent states were tasked with regularizing the status of SFRY nationals residing within their borders who did not possess citizenship. Because these individuals shared language, culture, religion, and family ties with one Republic but had made their lives in another, they were frequently left without legal rights of any sort, in some instances even being consigned to statelessness, with very serious consequences. Suddenly transformed into "aliens" in places where they had lived their lives for decades, they were often without the right to work or to travel and looked forward to retirement years in which they would receive neither health care nor state pensions.