UNICEF BiH's video: Victims and witnesses

Adoption of the Law on Protection and Treatment of Children and Juvenile in Criminal Proceedings introduced child protection measures and services into the criminal proceedings involving child victims and witnesses. The protective measures include psycho-social support from trained support providers (mostly psychologists) and limitation on the number of interviews (two during entire process). More than 20 support providers/expert advisors have been trained on working with children in contact with the law through two training programmes totalling in 33 months of mentorship and peer-to-peer education. While the support providers were mostly project-based personnel working on war crime cases in the beginning (2014), most of them focus their work on supporting vulnerable categories, including child victims and witnesses. The number of support providers fully employed from the local budgets increased from two in 2013 to 24 in 2021, for which the local governments invest directly additional funds exceeding BAM 700,000 annually to support child-friendly proceedings. Furthermore, the legal framework has been advanced in 2020, ensuring protection for all children regardless of their role in the criminal proceeding, which was the case only for child victims younger than 16. The architectural, legal and IT aspects of child-friendly rooms for conducting interviews with children have been standardised, harmonising the interviewing premisses and process across the country, to provide equitable access to justice.