The Campaign for Antidiscrimination Legislation

This was join project of Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and Center for Advanced Legal Studies. Project had several phases.

• Special supplement DANAS PRAVO to the daily DANAS; systematic and permanent reporting on legal matters in daily newspapers contribute to the development and expansion of legal consciousness of the citizens.
• Project also included open forums organised in the form of the open meetings in Novi Sad, Niš, Kragujevac and Belgrade. The aim of this activity was to analyse the current legal regulation through the open forums by prescribing for status of persons from the discriminated groups (minorities, disabled, sexual minorities, women, etc.) in systematic and multidisciplinary manner and to offer directions how to reform that regulation, in order to ensure the adoption of new legal acts that would be in accordance with the international standards.
• Antidiscrimination legislation was presented before the members of the Parliament of Serbia, the Parliament of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, and the Parliament of Vojvodina. The aim of the address was to convince the MPs of the necessity of new legislation of antidiscrimination in Serbia.
• Belgrade Centre organised seminar about antidiscrimination legislative. The aim of this phase was to bring together judges, prosecutors, journalists and attorneys and to provide them with an opportunity to discuss the antidiscrimination legislative in general as well as in Serbia and Montenegro. Seminar offered them the opportunity to learn how to recognise possible discrimination and to meet relevant professionals. The participants were provided with the supplementary literature in this area to help them achieving the highest possible level of professionalism and implementation in practice of the knowledge gained. Apart from the Draft Laws against Discrimination and Draft Act on Prohibition of Discrimination of Disabled Persons, the Centre has handed out publications of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, other publications related to human rights, and photocopies of articles and documents available in Serbian or English. The seminar was a combination of lectures, case studies, panel discussions and presentation of the Draft Law against Discrimination. Ex cathedra lectures were featured only in introductory part of the seminar to the extent necessary for informing the local professionals about the international standards on prohibition of discrimination, guaranteed by the treaties that S&M has ratified, as well as about procedure and jurisprudence of the international and regional judicial and quasi – judicial bodies in this field. The second part of the seminar was concentrated on the presentation of the Draft Law itself and the clarification of certain provisions.