President of Montenegro supported LGBTI community

Jakov Milatović, newly elected President of Montenegro, met on 28 June 2023 with representatives of the LGBTI community and organisations that support them on the occasion of International Day and Pride Month. That was an opportunity to gain insight into the challenges these communities face.

Mr. Milatović clearly stated that Montenegro is a country of equal rights for every citizen and that there shouldn’t be any kind of discrimination. To achieve that, institutional and legal support have to be ensured for every person.

Our colleagues from Juventas, Queer Montenegro, and Stana were among those who met with the President and presented their work.

The Trust Team established in Montenegro

One of the goals and tasks of the Strategy for Improving the Quality of Life of the LGBT Community in Montenegro, adopted in 2013, was the creation of a Trust Team consisting of members of the Police Administration and the LGBT community. The main tasks of the team include timely and constructive communication between the LGBT community and the Police Administration, constant monitoring of LGBT people’s safety, finding the best models to address their problems, monitoring the development of a contact network of the police officers working with LGBT community, supporting all activities related to police capacity reinforcement and cooperation with international partners monitoring the LGBT inclusion process.

The new team, formed by the decision of the Minister of the Interior, held its first meeting on 1 July 2019. The Team consists of officers of the Police Directorate, the Ministry of Interior and representatives of non-governmental organizations dealing with the protection of LGBTI persons – LGBT Forum Progress, LGBTIQ Social Centre, Juventas, Queer Montenegro and SPECTRA.

The team noted that non-governmental organizations dealing with the protection of LGBTI rights and the Police Directorate have a continuing quality cooperation and that Tim will ensure that the cooperation in the future period is further enhanced. The previous Action plan needs to be innovated in order to make the activities of the Team more concrete, which will further contribute to continuous monitoring of the issues of LGBTI security, confidence building and solving specific cases of relevance to the LGBTI community.