I. INTRODUCTION

During 2000, the Human Rights Chamber continued to fulfil its mandate. Over the course of the year, it received as many applications as it had in the four preceding years of its existence. By the end of 2000, the Chamber had registered a total of 6,675 individual applications. To deal more efficiently with this increase in its caseload, new practices and procedures were adopted. As a result, the Chamber was able to decide in only one year as many cases as it had in its previous four years of existence. In 2000 alone the Chamber issued 377 separate decisions resolving 438 individual applications. Since March 1996, when the Chamber was first constituted, through 2000, the Chamber has issued a total of 669 separate decisions resolving 846 individual applications. Even so, financial and space constraints will make it difficult to improve substantially on that record. Still, determination exists within the Chamber to find a way to decide more cases in the future and at the same time maintain its commitment to consider fully every single case brought before it.

As in previous years, a substantial number of applications received in 2000 concern housing-related matters. This shows clearly that the issue of return of refugees and displaced persons to their pre-war homes, the linchpin of the Dayton Peace Agreement, has yet to be resolved by the respondent Parties or by the international community. One significant trend noted in 2000 was the rate at which the Chamber registered applications in which the complaint was non-implementation by the local authorities of a decision received from the Commission for Real Property Claims. This despite the Entity laws on the implementation of such decisions imposed by the High Representative. If this situation continues, the Chamber can expect to receive many more thousands of such applications in 2001.

The year 2000 saw significant progress in the implementation of the Human Rights Chamber's decisions. But that progress was uneven throughout the country. Most notably, the Republika Srpska still resists fully complying with the Chamber's decisions. Also, a negative trend was evident in the execution of some decisions; applicants, when they entered into repossession, found the interiors of their apartments and houses looted and destroyed by previous occupants with the acquiescence of local authorities. This lack of protection clearly demonstrates ill will on the part of some public authorities to the return of refugees and displaced persons to their pre-war homes.

The year 2000 was also the last of the five-year transitional period for the Human Rights Chamber under the Dayton Peace Agreement. Looking back over the last five years, it appears that such an institution takes at least two to three years to become fully functional. The Human Rights Chamber, constituted in March 1996, progressed from nothing to become one of the most effective functioning state-level institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. It is currently operating at maximum efficiency within the constraints of the means available to it. The Human Rights Chamber has earned a high level of credibility in the country and continues to receive hundreds of applications every month.