In the National Assembly Building, the Working Group for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities and Women’s Parliamentary Network jointly presented the cooperation between the National Assembly and civil society organisations.
Dr. Vesna Rakonjac, Head of the informal Working Group for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities and Chairwoman of the Committee for Labour, Social Affairs, Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction, said that in order to include persons with disabilities in the society, and make their daily lives easier, different bodies had to work together: line ministries, parliamentary committees and NGOs. This area particularly required a multidisciplinary approach by the whole community. “The inclusion of children with developmental disabilities or another form of disability in regular schools also raises the issue of professional personal assistants. One of the topics that we have to deal with in our future work is the licensing of such services,” Dr. Rakonjac said. She said that another problem that persons with disabilities faced was employment after graduating from school, which is why it was necessary to encourage and develop social entrepreneurship in order to help the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the community.
Milanka Jevtović-Vukojičić presented the results of work of WPN, stating that the main goals of the Network were the inclusion of women in public and political life, raising awareness on women’s solidarity, and promotion of gender equality at all decision making levels. She reminded the
participants that women MPs had unanimously voted for the adoption of the Istanbul Convention and the amendments of the Criminal Code, according to which there was no statute of limitations in cases of sexual abuse of children.
The next speaker was Brankica Janković, the Commissioner for Protection of Equality. She said that the creation of the Working Group for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities was a step forward in this area, but the diligent work on education, accessibility, safety, security, labour, employment, healthcare and social welfare of persons with disabilities had to continue in order to achieve full equality between all citizens of Serbia. The Commissioner shared the information that disability was the fourth reason for complaints in the Republic of Serbia, as 11% of complaints that Commissioner annually received were related to discrimination based on disability.
Gordana Rajkov, Director of the Project for Strengthening of the Political Participation of Persons with Disabilities in Serbia, underlined that persons with disabilities themselves had to take part in political life, because the process of law adoption concerned all citizens of Serbia. This is why it was necessary for persons with disabilities to raise their voice in this process, in order to have an impact on the adoption of legislation and regulations. As an example of a discriminatory provision currently present in the Criminal Code, Ms. Rajkov quoted a provision that prescribed a shorter prison sentence for the criminal offence of rape of a disabled person than the prison sentence imposed for the same criminal offence when the victim was not considered disabled. This provision was supposed be amended soon.
Hamid Nuković, President of the Association of Persons with Developmental Disabilities “Jednakost”, and professor Marijana Pajvančić, representative of the Women’s Platform for Development of Serbia, spoke about the need to promote the right on political participation of persons with disabilities at the local level. It was emphasised that Serbia had a good legal framework, but in order to implement the adopted laws and realise the human rights of persons with disabilities in practice, all Government’s bodies and more NGOs had to be included.
After the speeches, there was a discussion. Among other things, the participants have discussed the promotion of rights and the political representation of persons with disabilities at all levels of power.
Presentation of the Working Group for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities and Women’s Parliamentary Network on the importance of informal parliamentary groups
