“Protection of fundamental human rights was guaranteed under the Constitution – of civic, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Article 9 of the Constitution stipulates that current international treaties are a part of Montenegrin legal order, and that they supersede the domestic legislation. The Parliament adopted a series of laws, with solutions directly or indirectly promoting this broad area, which, among other things, made Montenegro earn opening of negotiations with the EU.

By legal provisions, in the field of protection of human rights and especially minority rights, and through anti-discriminatory laws, and especially through the Law on Protector of Human Rights and Freedoms, a good foundation was made, upon which the institutions need to be built. Strength, fortitude and capacity of those institutions depend on our real power to enforce legal solutions in practice. Therefore the additional strengthening of the role of the Parliament is important, so that it can, better and more, monitor and assess the implementation of the adopted laws, and consider their effectiveness. With regard to our Parliament, in this field, the role of the Committee on Human Rights and Freedoms is especially important, because it focuses its attention on four important topics – the issues of antidiscrimination policy, position of LGBT persons, Roma and Egyptians, refugees and displaced persons, and minority rights.

We consider that we need to work diligently on upgrading the existing legal solutions relating to the antidiscrimination policy, taking into consideration suggestions by the European experts, but also the NGO sector, religious communities and other subjects, with a more clear definition of certain terms, in order to not have dilemmas during implementation of these laws. Additionally, it is important to further legally promote the institute of Protector of Human Rights and Freedoms; putting it into practice has shown its full effectiveness in Montenegro.  

With regard to protection of the Roma population, we need to point out the adopted strategy and the Action Plan, as well as concrete measures relating to the registration of Roma children in the Civil Registers, health care, employment and appearance of the media content in the Public Service. It is important to also point out the efforts with regard to resolving the issue of status of displaced and displaced and internally displaced persons, the highest number among them being Roma and Egyptians.   

During 2013, through intensive activities, the Parliament of Montenegro, among other things, adopted the Proposal for the Law on Amendments to the Law on Protection and Exercise of the Rights of the Mentally Ill during their stay in health institutions. Additionally, the Law on Social and Child Welfare was adopted, as well as the Law on Social Housing, and also a set of legal solutions on education. All of these laws are, directly or indirectly, related to the field of promotion of human rights and rights of the child.

Here, I would like to point out a special step forward with regard to rights of the citizens of Islamic religion, where their specific dietary requests are acknowledged, meaning that this law binds state and education institutions to observe religious rights.

We believe that it is important to provide incentive and to promote the work on adoption of the special Law on Religious Rights and Freedoms, in order to comprehensively regulate the relations of religious communities and mutual rights and obligations, as well as the issue of property of religious communities, and the acceleration of the restitution process and recovery of property rights.

Constitutional amendments, adopted at the end of July 2013, bring new quality to the manner of election of holders of the highest positions in judiciary and prosecutor’s office; it enhances the independence of judiciary and makes clear steps forward to their strengthening for establishing a full rule of law. Nevertheless, it is important that through the constitutional amendments, a legal regulation was adopted opening the possibility of achieving proportional representation of the members of minority peoples and national minorities in courts, state prosecutor’s office and Constitutional court, thereby a process of recovering trust of minority people in these institutions should begin, which was very weak, especially because of the manner of work in the previous period, lack of employees members of minorities in these institutions, and mostly because of lack of legally binding rulings with regard to war crimes and ethnic cleansing from the ‘90s.

It is important to point out that the Working Group for Building Trust in the Election Process, during several months of their hard work, through six legal solutions, opened and tried to resolve numerous issues concerning better, more transparent and fairer election process. Additionally, the issue of authentic representation of minorities in the local communities and in municipal assemblies was remade topical as part of the total election solutions regulating the right to authentic representation of the national minority communities guaranteed by the Constitution.

We are all aware that the legal regulations, set out strategies and ratification of international documents and conventions are not enough. Much more than that is needed – raising full awareness in society that minorities are part of our social reality and that it is necessary that we daily show more understanding and sensibility.

Minority peoples institutions – minority councils – we could say have gotten their place and have become recognisable institutions in society, despite their initial disorientation, as well as noted step-motherly treatment by the state, with regard to budget funds. Fund for Minorities and Centre for Preservation of Culture of Minorities, apart from insufficient budget allocations and all possible dilemmas with regard to regulation of their functioning, have become support for many significant projects for preservation of national, linguistic, cultural and religious identity of minorities. Of course, these are new institutions that need special care and attention that should not be lacking.

Members of minority communities are especially interested, as I have pointed out in one of the amendments, in taking care of constitutional guarantees of proportional representation of minorities, so that by taking care of professional and expert references, they could provide greater participation of minorities in public affairs, and work on professional training of missing professional personnel.  We know that certain steps have been made in this direction, but it is very significant to encourage competent institutions to work faster and more dynamically on this plan, trust of minorities in their institutions and in the state in which they live.

Finally, we could conclude that in the past seven years since renewal of its independence Montenegro has made significant progress in the field of protection of human rights and building of institutions. Further building of Montenegro as a democratic society of respecting affirmation of diversity would mostly depend on the ability of the Parliament to adopt legislation and control its implementation, especially with regard to minority and human rights.”