2022 was a year that marked several key steps forward in BiH with respect the human rights of LGBTI persons. One of the steps was the adoption of Action Plan to Improve the State of Human Rights of LGBTI People in BiH. It is the first time that a public policy adopted at the state level aims to systematically and comprehensively respond to the various challenges faced by LGBTI people and to give clear instructions to and impose obligations on competent institutions at all levels of government. The period ahead of us will be a period of insisting on its implementation and reporting on the extent to which we, as a state, truly meet and fulfil what we committed to.

However, the attacks on LGBTI community and activists from March 2023 overshadowed to some extent all the above advances and once again showed the prevalence of homophobia in the public, political and institutional spheres.

Despite significant steps forward in 2022, problems such as lack of security, domestic violence, peer violence, unsanctioned hate speech in public, and complete marginalisation in smaller areas of BiH remain. All the challenges, presented in detail in this report, also tell us in which directions we need to act. We hope that institutions and society will be ready to follow the pace necessary for social changes, the pace kept so far solely by human rights organisations and civil society activists.

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