The fourth Festival of queer film Merlinka in Sarajevo ended successfully in the early morning hours on Sunday, January 31. This year’s festival lasted two days and presented three feature-length films, three regional short films and a recording of the play on the life of Vjeran Miladinovic, after whom the festival was named. All films … Continued
Video with digital stories of LGBT people rounded up a media campaign on the International coming out day, led by SOC and Mediacentar Sarajevo, which are published on SOC‘s lgbt.ba portal and portal diskriminacija.ba. At ten days of the campaign it was five interviews with Nera, Amel, Helen, Farah and Liam about their coming out … Continued
As a part of the project „Fighting Hate Crime in BiH“, financed by the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of The Netherlands to the OSCE in Vienna and implemented by Sarajevo Open Centre in partnership with OSCE Mission in BiH, a training was held for police officers of MoI’s of: Tuzlanski, Posavski and Bosansko-podrinjski Canton on the 15th of October in Tuzla.
Pride, often called gay pride or gay parade, is a public assembling of LGBT people, activists, human rights defenders, as well as of all the others who want to support the struggle of LGBT people for equality in all the society spheres, and the respect of basic human rights.
The next day we were going back home. As we removed the nail polish in rainbow colors, changed our clothes to look more appropriate to Balkans, packed our flags and colorful feather scarves, packing rainbow badges I couldn’t help but wonder – what is the price of freedom?
It will provide LGBTI advocates in the remaining Council of Europe states who do not recognise same-sex couples with compelling arguments for protection.
Coming out, commonly used in the expression coming out of the closet, is a figure of speech, was also adopted and is now in common usage by LGBT communites and their allies in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language.
Sexual orientation is a personal feature of every person and any form of discrimination based on that should, in a healthy society, be seen as a violation of basic human rights.
I hope this session will show that politicians, parliamentarians, administrators and civils servants, are prepared to unite with activists – straight and gay -, NGO’s, international organizations and diplomats in an important effort: the fight for equality and dignity for all, regardless of who you are or whom you love.
In order to advance the state of LGBT rights in BiH, Sarajevo Open Center suggested three priority measures that should be taken by the institutions in charge.