Author: team

Trans and Bosnian-Herzegovinian

For the first time in history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, transgender rights were discussed in the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina on May 17th, 2017. I talked, from personal experience, about problems that transgender persons are faced with due to chaotic law regulations that fail to provide rights and freedoms anticipated in Convention on protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, which is being directly applied in Bosnia and Herzegovina and whose acts have priority over all other laws.

OSLOBOĐENJE: Train the Trainer programme for the Police of the Federation of BiH has turned out very productive

After last year’s successful completion of the Train the Trainer programme for the police officers of the Cantonal Ministries of Interior (MoI) and the representatives of the Police Academy of the Federation of BiH, this year every Cantonal MoI has to implement education programmes on hate crime. The mentioned education programmes should be implemented in the scope of their permanent trainings that are mandatory for each and every police officer of each MoI. Sarajevo Open Centre has advocated with every MoI in particular and made constant pressure directed towards introducing the module on hate crime into the programme of mandatory education, in which we have, to our great pleasure, succeeded.

Justification of sexual and physical violence against women in BiH is becoming more frequent

The Complaints Commission of the BiH Press Council, whose members are legal and media experts, on 20 July 2017 adopted the Decision by which it suggested to the web portals radiosarajevo.ba and slobodnabosna.ba to remove the published YouTube video made by the blogger Amir Hadžić, named Today’s Girls, and to, in the future, avoid publishing and giving media attention to contents that promote any kind of violence, discrimination, disdain, as it was, in this case,  done by the video “Today’s Girls”, regarding women. You can find this decision on this link.

Train the Trainer programme for the Police of the Federation of BiH has turned out very productive

These days we are in contact with all the Cantonal MoI’s, in order to see how things are progressing. The information we have is that some of the MoI’s have already implemented the education on hate crime, some are in the process of implementation at the moment, and the others will implement them by the end of 2017. So, in the regular and mandatory topics for educating the police officers of FBiH each Cantonal MoI has included the module on hate crime.

KOSOVO – Summary of ILGA Europe, annual review of the Human Rights situation of LGBTI people in Europe

Last year in Kosovo, equality laws and better implementation of existing legislation in regard to anti- discrimination laws were cited to be very important by an advocacy and coordination group for LGBTI rights. In addition, as part of the annual enlargement update, the EU Commission stressed the importance of commitment by local leaders, in regard to LGBT issues. Two local NGOs conducted a research on health and social care for LGBT people in Kosovo; through which they found troubling results, where those surveyed tended to be very homophobic. The NGOs made recommendations to relevant institutions.

Keele Symposium on Gender, Sexuality, and Law Research

Damir Banović, president of the SOC Assembly, on 16 June 2017, participated in the symposium called „Gender, Sexuality, and Law Research” (GSL) that was organized by the Keele University (United Kingdom) that has a multi-year tradition of research in the field of gender and law.

Building the institutional support network for LGBTI people in Canton Sarajevo

During the meetings, discussions on how the representatives of these institutions should deal with LGBTI people were held. There has been talk of sensitization through the education that will follow in the upcoming period for the representatives of these precise institutions through info sessions, but also through a two-day education on the human rights of LGBTI people.