In co-operation with the Ministry of Interior of Montenegro and local civil society organisations, the regional action “Promotion of diversity and equality in the Western Balkans” organised first peer-to-peer exchange training on hate crimes for police administrations of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, which took place in Podgorica on 7 – 9 December.

In his opening speech, Zoran Brdjanin, Director of the Montenegrin Police, noted that “it is necessary for all of us to recognise the specific damage caused by hate crimes against LGBTI people and continue to work together on continuous capacity building for timely, adequate and sensitised response in cases of hate crimes and hate speech, as well as more effective protection the rights of all LGBTI citizens”.

The participants of the event discussed about the role and modality of liaison officers, shared their experiences in working with LGBTI victims and talked about the situation with the LGBTI community. Co-operation in organising and protecting the Pride, protection of LGBTI community premises and other events, as well as capacities of officials working on specific cases to process those cases were also discussed in the meeting. In addition to these, the participants have discussed the judicial practice in Montenegro and police activities in gathering testimony of witnesses (victims) as evidence and tackled the issues of recording, classification and statistical monitoring of hate crimes and shared experiences and obstacles in sensitisation of police officers.

On this occasion, Mirjana Vlahovic Andrijasevic, Head of Division of Antidiscrimination Policies, Directorate for Human Rights from the Montenegrin Ministry of Justice, Human and Minority Rights emphasised that “the issue of protection and realization of human rights of LGBTI people is a topic of special importance for our Ministry. In this regard, fulfilling the activities of the Action Plan for the implementation of the strategy for improving the quality of life of LGBTI people in Montenegro for the period 2019 - 2023 and exchanging experiences at such seminars, well combine theory with practice.”

Beside police officers visiting from Bosnia and Herzegovina, participants also included their Montenegrin peers, as well as representatives from the judiciary and the Public Prosecutors office.

The peer-to-peer training program for police officers is developed under the action on “Promotion of diversity and equality in the Western Balkans”, that is a part of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”, implemented by the Anti-Discrimination Department of the Council of Europe.