Open Forum - Public support of Reforms within the Rule of Law

The fight for the respect of the human equality principle

Open Forum - Public support of Reforms within the Rule of Law

March, 2006

The text before you represents the resume of the project of the Committees for Human Rights Network in Serbia – CHRIS titled "Open forum –Public Support of Reforms within the Rule of Law ", with the aims being public advocacy for the general antidiscriminatory law passing and public debate dealing with the basic antidiscriminatory subjects.

At public meetings organized by the Network in the six cities: Novi Sad, Negotin, Vranje, Novi Pazar, Valjevo and Niš and media campaign, modern antidiscriminatory legal standards were presented to local public servants (municipal and district courts, municipal and district prosecution offices, police, centre for social work, offices of national employment service, public deputies), media and citizens associations. Discrimination in Serbia has finally acquired the status of a publicly accepted issue. It seems that, at present, there are no Nongovernment organizations in the country which do not deal with human rights and which did not include the fight against discrimination in its programme activities as well.

The principle of equality is also important to the public newspapers which do not publish pornographic pictures on the cover pages, media try to see through the legal responsibility identification proceedings of those who advocate blood and honour, and incidents such as fascistic performance at the Novi Sad University are publicly attacked. What is equally important is also the reaction of the state when it comes to discrimination - Supreme Court in Serbia solves the first case of discrimination, the authorities in Novi Sad and Vojvodina undertake steps towards the prevention of fascistic groups organization through the mechanisms of legal protection, and at People's Parliament of the Republic of Serbia are currently under the procedure of adopting two special antidiscriminatory laws - The Law Proposal on the Prohibition of Disabled Person's Discrimination and the Law Proposal of Gender Equality.

Finally, the Constitutional Court of Serbia reviews the request of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights in order to evaluate the definition of common law marriage of two persons of opposite sexes in order to determine whether it is in accordance with the Constitution. There is no doubt that things are moving forward and it would be really disconcerting if this country would prove to be immune to all the efforts of its inhabitants to improve their situation. Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that the progressive segment of the society was always a minority while there are a lot of those who tend to be drawn backwards, not towards traditional values, which could be construed as a legitimate tendency, but rather towards the muck of crime, hatred and intolerance. This fact should dispel the false notion that the struggle for equality is approaching its victorious finale since even in the most developed countries of the world this issue has been tackled only in the last couple of decades and is still far from being resolved. Both United States and European countries are in the midst of the struggle for recognition of the same sex marriages. The European Union initiated the procedures before the European court of Justice against the member states that have not implemented the highest standards and directives concerning discrimination required by European Council.

Even in the countries of the European Union there are cases of discrimination of persons or groups on the basis of race, skin colour, ancestry, national or ethnic origin, language, religious or political persuasion, sex, sexual identity, sexual orientation, economic status, birth, genetic traits, health status, disability, marital status and other personal traits. As a consequence, the European Union implements active measures in order to suppress and eradicate all forms of discrimination. The regional situation bears remarkable similarity to the situation in our country. In Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia, nongovernment organizations created the drafts of the Laws against discrimination while nongovernment organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia are in the process of preparing for the draft of this law. As usual, we are in the similar phase as our neighbours with the exception that we have the opportunity to make some headway. There are no discernible obstacles in the way of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Parliament to prevent them from passing a General antidiscriminatory Law along with two special antidiscriminatory laws that are to be adopted during this year. The model for this law was created at the Institute for Comparative Law in Belgrade even four years ago. There are problems related to discrimination in our society and we should give every chance to the victims and their representatives to use legal mechanisms to gain their equality.

The passing of antidiscriminatory law is the obligation of our state. The fulfillment of this obligation is requested by the United Nations and the officials of European Council and European Union. Moreover, during a recent adoption of the strategy of association to European Union, our state undertook the obligation to pass the antidiscriminatory law.

It should be noted that this obligation does not only refer to the protection of special groups but rather entails the passing of the law that will ensure legal protection from discrimination for every person regardless of his or her intrinsic personal properties. There can be no doubt that the constituents of civil society will remind the state of its obligation daily. Nongovernment organizations have already joined permanent or ad hoc coalitions and have been implementing the campaign for passing the antidiscriminatory law and vigilantly searching for signs of discriminatory practices, preparing to give their contribution to the implementation of the law after its being passed.

The realization of this project has been supported by the Freedom House, through funding of the US Agency for International Development and within the project “Democratic transition and reintegration in Serbia”.

Download:

· Open Forum-Report and Recommendations.pdf (application/pdf) - Open Forum – report and recommendations., veličina/size: 116 KB

Vojkan Ristić

The Keys