Last year Serbia recorded slight improvement in human rights protection, while the journalists remained unsecured and human rights activists were regularly exposed to online threats, the Human Right Watch (HRW) said.

In the part of the report dealing with Kosovo HRW said journalists faced threats and intimidation too, while criminal proceedings regarding crimes against them were slow.

Serbia
Progress in human rights protection was limited in 2016. Asylum seekers and migrant arrivals decreased, but the asylum system remains flawed with inadequate protections for unaccompanied children. Attacks and threats against journalists remain a problem. War crimes prosecutions progress remains slow. The Roma minority continue to face housing discrimination and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists are subject to threats and attacks.

The UN’s failure to compensate victims of lead poisoning at UN-run camps for people displaced by the Kosovo war left families struggling to care for sick relatives, says a Human Rights Watch report.

In a new report published on Thursday, Human Rights Watch calls on the United Nations to pay individual compensation to Kosovo Roma victims affected by lead contamination in the UN-run camps for war-displaced people in Kosovo.

The Human Rights Watch published on Wednesday a report which notes that journalists across the Western Balkans face a hostile environment that impedes their ability to do critical reporting.

"In Kosovo, the Association of Journalists of Kosovo registered 14 cases of violence and threats against journalists in 2015, and eight cases in the first half of 2016," notes the report.

Journalists in the Western Balkans work in a hostile environment that directly affects their ability to do critical, independent reporting essential to a democratic society, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia should take immediate steps to create safe working conditions for the media and to end impunity for crimes against journalists.