Prishtinë, 5 June 2018 –World Environment Day, that is on 5th of June, again finds our country in front of environmental problems impacted by arbitrary actions, without including them on State’s priorities, and without calculating the cost for their restoration, as well as the impact on citizens’ rights on safe and healthy environment.
This day’s symbolic is provision of opportunity on global awareness rising as per protection of the environment as well as directing policies towards expanding the bases for an open-mind opinion and responsible conduct, both from individuals and from institutions and communities, with the aim to protect and improve living environment. United Nations, this day, this year, have marked with the message “Reject single-use plastic. Refuse what you can’t re-use. Together, we can chart a path to a cleaner, greener world”. Thus, highly evaluating the role of the environment, Goals of Sustainable Development, has given a special place to the environment and to environmental protection, dividing it in six objectives.
Even though country’s Constitution has listed environment and its protection among values on which the constitutional order is based as well as “Responsibility for the Living Environment” has been encompassed in the Chapter of Human Rights, the State did not achieve to undertake tangible steps to list the environment in country’s priorities.
Pollution of water, air and the soil, mismanagement of waste, failure to put noise under control, lack of qualitative monitoring, lack of qualitative environmental information, problems with judicial system, are some of inequities which continuously restrict and violate citizens’ right to the safe and healthy environment, impacting on their right to life, the right to privacy, the right to property, the right to quiet enjoyment of their homes, the right to access public documents, the right to use legal remedies, etc.
The issue of great concern remains to be authorities’ failure to oversee and enable dwelling places with appropriate norms of spatial planning which would guarantee sustainable regulation of the environment, by ensuring citizens’ equal treatment, freedom of movement and appropriate access to public services.
Having in regard the situation in which is the environment and its impact on citizens’ rights, with particular emphasis on their health, the Ombudsperson, as a national institution entrusted with the mandate to protect, supervise and promote human rights, calls upon responsible Institutions, to undertake concrete steps to terminate misdeeds with environmental impact as well as placement of the environment on Government’s priorities.