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ALJ 2/2015 Wolfgang Benedek 278 largely ignored its recommendations when they concerned activities of UNMIK. This institution was nationalized by UNMIK in 2006.2 With the Declaration of Independence of Kosovo in 2008, UNMIK lost its dominant role, but still remained with limited activities. In 2004, the Venice Com- mission on Democracy through Law of the Council of Europe adopted a report on possible review mechanisms,3 which led to the establishment of the Human Rights Advisory Panel (HRAP) by UNMIK in 2006,4 which really became operative only at the end of 2007. Institutionally it is part of UNMIK, but fully independent.5 The present members of the Panel appointed by the Special Repre- sentative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) on the nomination of the President of the European Court of Human Rights are Marek Nowicki as presiding member, and Christine Chinkin as well as Françoise Tulkens as members. Marek Nowicki also served as international ombudsman in Kosovo after the establishment of this institution in 2000 until 2005. The HRAP’s mandate is to examine alleged human rights violations attributable to UNMIK and to make recommendations to the SRSG. For this purpose it issues “Opinions”, but has no enforcement capacity.6 The applicable law is the European Convention on Human Rights and the major UN human rights conventions. The last deadline for complaints was March 31, 2010, and only inci- dents occurred within the period from April 23, 2005, until this deadline, including ongoing viola- tions from before, could be covered. The Panel altogether received 527 cases of which, at the end of 2014, 439 were closed while 88 were still pending. Until that date the Panel in 79 sessions deliv- ered 521 decisions on admissibility and 267 opinions on the merits. 252 opinions found violations in 164 cases, while only 15 opinions found no violations.7 By June 30, 2015, the statistics are as follows: 474 closed cases, 53 pending cases, 302 opinions issued, 282 violations found, 20 cases in which no violation has been found.8 The kinds of cases received by the Panel stretched from property claims and privatization cases to missing persons, killings and disappearances. For example, after reviewing more than 100 complaints alleging the lack of adequate criminal investigations in relation to disappearances, abductions and killings, the Panel found systemic failures of UNMIK in this regard, which could not be justified by the difficulties encountered by UNMIK at the beginning of its mission.9 In 2014, for the first time, two opinions were adopted in which the HRAP found a violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) due to ethnic discrimination. In the following, these decisions will be presented and discussed leading to some general conclu- sions on the work of the HRAP. 2 See Christopher Waters, Nationalizing Kosovo’s Ombudsperson, 12 JOURNAL OF CONFLICT AND SECURITY LAW, 2007, at 139. 3 EUROPEAN COMMISSION ON DEMOCRACY THROUGH LAW, OPINION ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN KOSOVO: POSSIBLE ESTABLISHMENT OF REVIEW MECHANISMS (2004), http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2004) 033-e.asp. 4 See UNMIK Regulation 2006/12 of Mar. 13, 2006, on the establishment of the Human Rights Advisory Panel; and UNMIK Regulation 2007/3 of Jan., 12, 2007, amending UNMIK Regulation No. 2006/12 on the establishment of the Human Rights Advisory Panel. 5 See the pertinent regulations and rules of procedure on the homepage of the Human Rights Advisory Panel, http://www.unmikonline.org/hrap/Eng/Pages/default.aspx (last visited Aug. 21, 2015). 6 See the homepage of the Human Rights Advisory Panel for more details; see also CHATHAM HOUSE, INTERNATIONAL LAW MEETING SUMMARY: THE KOSOVO HUMAN RIGHTS ADVISORY PANEL, SPEAKER: PROF. CHRISTINE CHINKIN, Jan. 2012, http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/Research/International%20Law/260112summary.pdf. 7 HRAP, ANNUAL REPORT 2014, at 34 (Mar. 2015), http://www.unmikonline.org/hrap/Eng/Documents/Annual_report_ 2014.pdf. 8 Information received from the HRAP. 9 HRAP, ANNUAL REPORT 2014, at i.