Renewed LGBTIQ+ Programme for the Western Balkans

During the week of the Kvirhana Festival and Bosnia and Herzegovina Pride in Sarajevo, Rainbow Rose brought together activists, NGO representatives, and political family members from Bosnia & Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia to kick start a renewed Western Balkans LGBTIQ+ activists’ programme.

Following last September’s reflective meeting with partners on this topic, it was decided that a renewed start was needed with fresh objectives to spearhead a new programme. With a 4-month cycle agreed, activists from our sister parties and political thinktanks in the region came together in Sarajevo for knowledge building and workshop sessions to agree tasks, set objectives, and create a plan to deliver them.

We opened with a best practice example from Croatia, where SDP Hrvatska approved the establishment of a Queer Forum within the party. We were grateful to Karlo Vedak, the SDP Hrvatska Queer Forum’s President, for setting out how they achieved this and for taking questions.

We made our programme bespoke to each country, partnering activists with NGO’s to get detailed knowledge of the situation of the LGBTIQ+ community in their country. We thank Labris and Queer Montenegro for their invaluable help, and to Sarajevo Open Centre’s Emina Bošnjak for welcoming activists and setting out the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This then fed into the practical sessions, so that achievable aims could be discussed and agreed upon to take forward over the next few months. These ranged from meeting with LGBTIQ+ NGO’s in the home country to hosting an online ‘Human Library’ so party members can ask questions to members of the LGBTIQ+ community to foster better knowledge and understanding, to the local party hosting an event in a queer space and for the party to speak to political leaders to begin a policy process to include LGBTIQ+ issues. We will be supporting the activists during these next few months to achieve success.  

We are grateful to Forum Left Initiative, Fond Za Progresivne Politike, Progres, and Friedrich Ebert Striftung BiH for their participation and on-going support for this programme. The work will continue into the autumn.

We timed the weekend programme to coincide with the annual Kvirhana Festival, organised and hosted by the Sarajevo Open Centre, and Bosnia and Herzegovina Pride. We participated in the cultural programme, meeting many local activists from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region. We then gathered on the Saturday at Susan Sontag Square to march with activists past the Presidency building and to Koševo Park for a pride rally and entertainment.

This grows our support for the LGBTIQ+ in the region, and to support furthering the progressive elements within our political family to achieve lasting change for our LGBTIQ+ community in the Western Balkans.