Strengthening Capacities of Serbian Police and Judges on Anti-Discrimination
From May 10th to 13th, 2016, two trainings aimed at strengthening capacities for implementation of anti-discrimination principles were organized for representatives of the Serbian Ministry of Interior in Belgrade, Serbia. The two modules titled “Intercultural Communication and Antidiscrimination” and “Leadership and Antidiscrimination” were designed for fifteen police officers each from various police directorates of the Ministry of the Interior. The two-day training modules were implemented by Colonel Peter Lamplot from the Security Academy (SIAK) of the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs of Austria and anti-discrimination expert Karin Bischof of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights. The Office for Human and Minority Rights hosted these events as the trainings were envisaged by the government’s Action Plan for the Implementation of the Strategy for the Prevention and Protection against Discrimination for the period 2014-2018 under 4.1.7 Provision of vocational training for employees in the Police, on the topic of prohibition of discrimination. The trainings were well received by the participants and the inter-active methodology applied by the trainers allowed for an intensive exchange of experiences.
The following week on May 17th and 18th, one more training on anti-discrimination took place in Zlatibor that was geared toward strengthening capacities of Serbian judges in training. The two-day training titled “Anti-Discrimination Legislation Implementation in the Republic of Serbia” was implemented by Judge Kurt Weisgram of the Regional Court Wiener Neustadt in Austria. The Serbian Judicial Academy hosted this event as part of a four-day training program for 32 judges in training. The participants were highly appreciative of the competence of the lecturer and of getting the opportunity to work on practical cases from different national contexts.
All three events were implemented within the framework of the EU Twinning project “Support to the Advancement of Human Rights and Zero Tolerance for Discrimination” funded by the European Union (IPA 2013), and implemented by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights and the Slovenian Office for National Minorities, in cooperation with the Serbian Office for Human and Minority Rights (OHMR) and the Commissioner for Protection of Equality (CPE). The overall objective of the EU Twinning project is to further improve and establish a legislative framework in the field of human rights and protection of minorities and to further harmonize this legal framework with European standards. The project activities are aimed at strengthening the capacity of the existing two key beneficiaries, the OHMR and the CPE, other public administration bodies and civil society organizations in the implementation of relevant policies in the field of human rights and anti-discrimination policies at national and local level.
