We greet with great satisfaction the decision of the Government of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, which, after 11 years, has made the first step by selecting the most successful candidate out of four who met the criteria in the competition for the director of the Institute for Providing Free Legal Aid of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton. Namely, the Government has chosen Aida Zerem from the applicants for the position of the director of the Institute. The Ministry of Justice, Administration, and Local Self-Government is tasked with requesting an opinion from the Agency for Civil Service of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The next step is for the Agency to provide an opinion to the Ministry, and if the opinion is positive, the official appointment of the director of the Institute for Free Legal Aid of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton will follow.
We hope that the Government of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton will fulfill our earlier request and, within 60 days of the director's appointment, also appoint the remaining employees/officials of the Institute. This step will finally unlock a years-long process, and the citizens of our Canton, more than 20% of whom are estimated to be in need, will know the address where they can easily request and receive free legal aid. Providing free legal aid is also a human right, and from now on, all those in need in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton will be able to enjoy this right.
"We would like to thank the Minister of Justice, Administration, and Local Self-Government, Goran Karanović, who has been at our disposal from the very beginning and has shown readiness and willingness to finally resolve this issue. We also thank the Minister of Finance, Adil Šuta, who has provided us with support and confirmed that financial resources for the work of the Institute are regularly planned in the Budget. At the same time, we thank the Prime Minister of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, Marija Buhač, who provided both verbal and written support and fulfilled her promise by ensuring that our Canton will now have a director and a functional Institute for Providing Free Legal Aid. We also thank the other ministers who ultimately supported the appointment of the proposed candidate. We are grateful to the media, civil society organizations, and everyone else who selflessly supported our campaign in any way", said Edisa Demić, representative of the initiative "Right to Legal Aid – Mostar."
With this move by the Government of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, all marginalized individuals from the nine municipalities and cities in our Canton will be able to access free legal aid. We would like to point out that the offices of the Institute for Providing Free Legal Aid have been located for the past ten years at Aleksa Šantić Street, near the VI Primary School in Mostar, and we hope that the Institute will remain at this location so that time and resources are not unnecessarily wasted on finding and adapting a new one. In the coming period, we will provide all the necessary information about the Institute's operations to all municipalities in our Canton through civil society organizations.
We take this opportunity to call on the Agency for Civil Service of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to provide their opinion within the shortest legal timeframe so that the Institute can begin its work as soon as possible.
The initiative "Right to Legal Aid – Mostar" was carried out by the members of the Association for Education and Development "Dignitet" and the Nansen Dialogue Centre (NDC) Mostar, who, over the past months, have engaged a large number of well-known and influential individuals, mayors, municipal heads, media representatives, and various institutions that have publicly supported this extremely important social issue.
