Representatives of the NGO Mladiinfo Montenegro attended a three-day seminar “Between law and practice: key obstacles and challenges in the field of protection and promotion of the rights of minority people and other minority national communities in Montenegro – For equality in public and private sectors” from 29th to 31st of July 2020 in the hotel “Slovenska Plaza” in Budva. The seminar was realized by the Center for monitoring and research (CeMI) within the project “Contribution to the development and improvement of the rights of minority people and other minority national communities in Montenegro”, supported by the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights of Montenegro.
The aim of the three-day seminar was to strengthen the capacity of stakeholders, as well as the knowledge of members of minority people and other minority national communities about their rights.
On the first day of the seminar, doc. dr Danijela Vukovic Calasan, professor at the University of Montenegro, from the Faculty of Political Sciences held lectures on “Management of ethnocultural pluralism in Montenegro” and “Multiculturalism and social cohesion”. The lectures explained the differences between multiculturalism and ethnocultural pluralism, and they also talked about the dominant ethnocultural groups in Montenegro, as well as the actualization of the concept of social cohesion.
As part of the first day of the seminar, the lecture was given by MA Sinisa Bjekovic, protector of human rights and freedoms of Montenegro. Topics covered in these lectures are, “Protection of minority rights from the perspective of the Ombudsman institution”, “Violation of minority rights”, “Right to work and the practice of affirmative action in employment”.
On the second day of the seminar, a discussion was held on the promotion of the rights of national minorities and their position in society. Leon Gjokaj, Director General of the Directorate for the Promotion and Protection of Minority Rights in the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, spoke about the position of national minorities in the media, in the field of education and their language, emphasizing the position of Roma in Montenegro. The conclusion of the second day was the following: in order to put the position of national minorities on an equal footing with other citizens of this country, they should learn from an early age, starting from parents and the education system, and later to look at all people without prejudice and without addressing attention to the color of the skin or to which nation they belong because it is not what defines a person, as well as the fact that the issue of minority nations is the issue of Montenegro.
On the third day of the seminar, dr Zlatko Vujovic, president of the board of directors of CeMi and secretary general of the European network of election monitoring organizations, explained how the mandate is divided in the elections for minority nations and how many mandates each party has won and how the elections work, as well as what the rights of minority people in the electoral process are.
In addition to all the activities, our representatives as well as other participants had enough free time to relax and enjoy the beach and pool.
This seminar enabled the participants to expand their knowledge about the rights of minority people and their position in Montenegro in general.
