Gender Equality and Prohibition of Discrimination Should be Involved in the BiH Law on Sports

The 17th session of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina will be held on 16th September 2015. On the agenda of this session will be the Proposal of Amendments to the Law on Sports in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The proponent of these amendments is the representative Maja Gasal-Vražalica. In the past year, Maja showed her great will to cooperate with the civil society organizations focusing on the following issues: gender equality, suppression of discrimination and rights of minority groups.

Amendments, which were made in cooperation with Sarajevo Open Centre and the representative Maja Gasal-Vražalica predict following changes:

– The discriminatory term “disabled persons” should be replaced with a term “person with a disability” in the entire Law;
– In accordance to the BiH Law on Prohibition of Discrimination and BiH Law on Gender Equality, prohibition of discrimination should be involved in the entire Law on Sports;
– Equal availability of sport regardless of race, ethnicity, social status, religious, political or any other belief, disability, health status, age, sex and gender, sexual orientation and gender identity becomes one of the basic principles on which sport is based;
– Prohibition of hate spreading and intolerance based on nationality and ethnicity, skin color, religious, political or any other belief, disability, sex and gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, language or any other personal attributes becomes also one of the basic principles on which sport is based;
– Gender equality issue and equal availability of sport is introduced into the Strategy for the Sport Development;
– In the future, The Council of Sports, as the state body for the development of sports, can be formed only if there is a minimum of 40% representation of both genders;
– Gender based financing through this Law becomes legal obligation of the BiH Ministry of Civil affairs.

We sincerely hope that this proposal will get support of the representatives of all parties, and when it comes to gender equality, combating discrimination and hate speech in sports, we hope that this will be a step forward.