Human Rights Action (HRA) submitted today 14 amendments to the Bill on the Prohibition of Discrimination to the members of a Parliamentary Committee for human rights, which will be discussed by the Committee at the meeting on Friday 25th June.

HRA has been actively involved in a public discussion on the Draft Law on Protection against Discrimination. Although the Proposer of the Law thus far adopted about 60% of our comments on the Draft Law, we believe that it would be necessary to adopt the proposed 14 amendments to ensure effective protection at the level of EU directives and directive provided by countries in the region.

Moreover, we believe it is necessary to amend the offense provision to include punishment for mobbing, for forcing anyone to comment on gender or sexual orientation, for harassment of those who report discrimination or witness it, and so on. We remind that the Bill only provides for 4 types of violations, of which only two are related to the violation of norms on the prohibition of discrimination, while the remaining two provide for accountability of NGOs to file a complaint without authorization and state authorities, which do not keep records.

We also believe that it is necessary to explicitly prohibit discrimination in Montenegro based on political party, union or other organization affiliation, as well as on basis of marital and family status, and that it is not satisfactory to just state the prohibition of discrimination because one belongs to “a group”. We also proposed a separate article on the prohibition of discrimination among children, since other specific forms of discrimination have already been listed. We suggested that the money collected from fines for violations goes to the Fund for the Protection of discrimination in order to finance free legal help for victims of discrimination.

With regard to judicial protection, we sought for the plaintiffs to be allowed to sue before the court of their permanent residence, or the court where the act of discrimination took place or the damage was inflicted; for the appeal not to delay the execution of order prohibiting recurrence of act of discrimination; for the revision to always be allowed, as well as to explicitly allow the Protector of Human Rights and Freedoms to file misdemeanor and criminal charges and complaints of discrimination. We also requested the Protector to commit to consult NGOs involved in fighting discrimination etc. when preparing reports and recommendations.

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