On May 10, TIR had the opportunity to teach in Bosnia and Herzegovina at a training seminar for law enforcement and veterinary authorities. The event was initiated and organized by lawyer Anda Sandal Karic and her team of the non-profit animal welfare organization Animal Friends Bosnia (Prijatelji Životinja). They invited a delegation from TIR to Sarajevo to talk about our many years of practical experience regarding the prosecution of animal welfare offenses under Swiss law.

The training day took place at the Radon Plaza Congress Hotel in Sarajevo and was simultaneously translated into Serbo-Croatian and English for all participants. The goal of the event was to provide the relevant authorities with expertise on how to effectively investigate and sanction animal welfare offenses in practice. Among the audience were prosecutors, police, and veterinary inspectors from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

TIR legal staff addressed the conference topic "Swiss Animal Welfare-Related Criminal Law" in four detailed presentations. The focus was on typical animal cruelty cases like mistreatment and neglect, methods to identify such cases and how to prosecute animal cruelty cases in practice. The relationship between animal cruelty and crimes against health and life of humans and the necessity to prevent both types of crimes were repeatedly emphasized.

In his introductory presentation, TIR executive director Dr. Gieri Bolliger gave a brief overview of Swiss animal welfare law and went on to speak about the unique concept of animal dignity protection under Swiss law. Bianca Körner continued by demonstrating the significance and practical implementation of the individual animal cruelty provisions under the Animal Welfare Act with the help of numerous practical examples. In her presentation, Dr. Vanessa Gerritsen addressed the regulations concerning the transport and slaughter of farm animals.

Katerina Stoykova closed the TIR presentations with a talk on the enforcement of the animal welfare-related penal provisions with particular emphasis on the importance of the investigative stage.

For Bosnia and Herzegovina, this seminar was the first of its kind and, from the point of view of the organizers and the participants, it was a great success. For TIR, the conference was topped off by lasting impressions of Sarajevo’s remarkable history and culture and by a deeply moving visit to a state-run dog shelter in Praca. We were very impressed by the important work of Animal Friends Bosnia who not only have boots on the ground to help street animals but also work to bring about legal changes for animals in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  

In 2022, TIR was invited to speak at a similar training event in Pristina, Kosovo, by the Animal Rights Foundation Kosovo (ARF) and the StrayCoCo Foundation (see news release of May 27, 2022), with whom we have been keeping in close touch for quite some time. In the future, we hope to intensify our collaboration with Animal Friends Bosnia and are already considering further joint projects to help animals.

TIR would like to thank everyone involved from Animal Friends Bosnia, especially Anda Sandal Karic, Elvis Karic, and Markku Nikulainen, as well as former prosecutor Berina Alihodžić for their warm welcome in Sarajevo and their invaluable animal welfare work in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We would also like to thank the Stumme Brüder Foundation in Vaduz as well as Jelena Dukic and Elza Ramadani for their active and tremendous support.