The following is based on a communication sent by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and other UN experts to the Government of Serbia on 30 January 2026. The communication remained confidential for 60 days before being made public, giving the Government and the company time to reply. As of the time of publishing this communication, no response had been received. If one is received, it will be made public on the Special Procedures communications database.
What follows is a shortened version of the communication.
Read the full communicationBACKGROUND
Topic: break-in at the house of woman human rights defender, Ljiljana Nešić.
Ms. Ljiljana Nešić is a woman human rights defender, and President of the Citizens’ Association of Women for Peace. She has been active in protecting women’s rights and carrying out feminist and pro-peace activism as well.
Ms. Marija Trajkovic is a woman human rights defender, who works together with Ms. Ljiljana Nešić at The NGO Žene Za Mir.
The NGO Žene Za Mir (Women for Peace) is a human rights organisation founded in 2007 in Leskovac, Serbia. It runs a hotline for women and children who are victims of domestic violence and works to empower women survivors. Their mission is to promote, educate and protect women’s rights, with a commitment to building peace and achieving non-violence.
ALLEGATIONS
On 22 December 2025, the home of woman rights defender, Ljiljana Nešić, was broken into and ransacked by unidentified individuals in Leskovac, Serbia. The incident took place five days after her television appearance on 17 December 2025 on N1 TV, in which she publicly addressed recent incidents of femicides in Leskovac and the lack of response from the relevant authorities.
The woman human rights defender lives on the first floor of the house with her family, which has a separate entrance. She reported that she hadn’t noticed anything unusual when she left home early that morning. Around 12 p.m. local time, her husband called to tell her that the ground floor had been broken into. Specifically, that he had discovered that the door was open, with its glass window broken. Shortly after, police arrived to the scene. All drawers and cupboards had been thoroughly ransacked, and the furniture was turned upside down. However, nothing was taken from the property, despite money and other valuables having been left on the table.
On 26 December 2025, Ms. Nešić went to the Leskovac police station to give her statement regarding the incident. She told police officers that she believed the break-in was staged to intimidate her, because of her work as the President of Žene Za Mir. She also relayed that she had previously faced a series of attacks, related to her human rights work.
On 28 December 2025, she returned to the police station, where police officers showed her CCTV footage obtained from a neighbouring house. The footage was missing a 10-minute segment, which likely contained visual evidence of the perpetrators and the break-in itself. When Ms. Nešić asked why the footage was missing, the police said that it could have been a technical glitch or that the camera’s sensor may have not picked up any movement. However, the CCTV footage appears to cut directly from an image of the ground-floor door intact to the same door with its glass window shattered. Moreover, the missing segment coincides with the time in which the break-in took place. This raises concerns that the CCTV footage may not be complete and may have been modified in a way that obscures the circumstances of the forced entry and the identity of those involved.
Since 2022, Ms. Nešić and her colleague at the organisation, Žene Za Mir, Ms. Marija Trajkovic, have become targets of harassment and intimidation. They have been threatened faced cyber attacks, and have been subjected to smear campaigns and criminal complaints. Additionally, they have been physically attacked, stalked and surveilled by unidentified men and have received non-verbal warnings, such as suspicious damage to their cars and the repeated disappearance of their pets.
CONCERNS
In the communication, we express our serious concerns for the safety of Ms. Ljiljana Nešić. We are concerned that, as a woman human rights defender, she appears to have been targeted solely because of her legitimate work in the defence and empowerment of women’s rights, specifically relating to gender-based violence and femicide. The circumstances surrounding the missing CCTV footage and the inadequate response from the authorities raise serious concerns about the investigation process and may point towards a culture of impunity concerning threats and attacks against women human rights defenders in Serbia.
