AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Media Advisory

AI Index: EUR 63/006/2006 (Public)

News Service No: 015

19 January 2006

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Press briefing invitation

Discrimination in employment

Amnesty International will present its latest report, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Behind closed gates: ethnic discrimination in employment, at a meeting with journalists in Sarajevo on 26 January 2006.

Discrimination in employment during the 1992-95 war, as well as in the post-war period, has been endemic and has affected large sectors of society. It continues to deny tens of thousands of people from ethnic minorities their rights to work, social care and education. The report calls on the authorities and companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina to fulfil their international and domestic obligations and end ethnic discrimination in employment - a major obstacle to the return of displaced members of minority communities.

The report includes two case studies:

From being a company with a significant number of employees from each of the three major communities before the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Aluminij aluminium factory in Mostar has become a company with an overwhelmingly Croat workforce.

Unfairly dismissed during the war, non-Serb workers from Ljubija iron-ore mines near Prijedor have not been reinstated in their jobs, nor received other forms of reparation.

When: 26 January, 1100 CET (1000 GMT)

Where: International Committee for Human Rights

Bjelave 20

Sarajevo

Who: David Diaz-Jogeix, Deputy Programme Director Europe and Central Asia, Amnesty International

Omer Fisher, Researcher on Bosnia and Herzegovina, Amnesty International

Present at the meeting will be some of the victims of discrimination in employment whose cases are listed in the report.

For more information please contact: Lydia Aroyo, Press Officer for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International on +44 (0) 20 7413 5599, +44 (0) 7771 796 350, e-mail: laroyo@amnesty.org or (+387) 61374120 from 25 to 27 January 2005.

Public Document

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For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566

Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web: http://www.amnesty.org

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