At the end of May, the first Pride Parade in Montenegro will be held. The pride parade will come and go, but the problems will remain. One of the key demands of the organizers of the LGBT Forum Progress is to enable extramarital union.
"This by no means means the legalization of marriages between same-sex couples," says Aleksandar Saša Zeković, a researcher of human rights violations.
This means recognizing numerous rights that will make everyday life easier for these people.
"Let's start, for example, from the right to a family pension or the right to inherit a pension. Just as an unmarried partner can inherit a pension from his partner, on any basis, so in this case, persons who are in same-sex partners could also have such a right ", explains Zeković.
He states that the issues of inheritance rights, property... which, as things stand now, are not possible when it comes to same-sex unions.
To that should be added the right to maintenance, as well as visits in hospital or prison. That's why Zeković submitted to the Constitutional Initiative, which requests the initiation of the procedure for the constitutionality of the Family Law. If the court were to declare it unconstitutional, members of the LGBT population would be able to enjoy all the rights that the Family Law recognizes for heterosexual couples.
Their better position will also be helped by the implementation of Juventus' Action Plan for the fight against homophobia.
"There is also education, health, culture and media, these are all areas that the members of the community themselves have defined as important and in which they would like to have the same rights as everyone else," says Jelena Čolaković from Juventas.
Experts note that these are rights that do not affect other citizens in any way.
"It is not anything that is special or something that was specially invented for the LGBT community, but in fact it is something that belongs to all people," said Čolaković.
That is why the Pride Parade is being prepared.
"The key message of the Parade will be that the daily life of people who belong to that population, which is policy and practice everywhere in the world, changes on a daily basis," Zeković said.
These changes take time.
"That maybe we can welcome the second Pride Parade in a situation where we can state that Montenegro has made some progress in this matter," says the researcher of human rights violations.
And until then, the first Parade should be held. And already at the end of this month - May 31...
Bonus video:
