The Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, Milan Antonijević, opened the seminar “Recognizing and Responding to Discrimination,” intended for police employees of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia.

Addressing the participants, Commissioner Antonijević emphasized that police employees bear great responsibility, as they are often the first point of contact between citizens and the institutions of the system. For this reason, it is of crucial importance that they are trained to recognize discrimination and adequately protect the rights of citizens, particularly when it comes to members of vulnerable social groups.

During the working part of the seminar, representatives of the Commissioner’s professional service, senior advisers Relja Pantić and Tatjana Jokanović, delivered lectures focused on the practical application of anti-discrimination regulations. Through interactive work and discussion, topics covered included the concept and forms of discrimination, personal characteristics as grounds for discrimination, the procedure for submitting complaints to the Commissioner, as well as specific challenges in the field of gender equality. The aim of the training was to bring abstract legal categories closer to everyday police work, in order to make a clear distinction between discrimination and other unlawful conduct.

This training program represents an example of long-standing successful cooperation between the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, the Ministry of the Interior, and the OSCE Mission to Serbia. The program has been implemented continuously since 2016, and to date more than 800 police employees have successfully completed it, from members of the traffic and criminal police to employees working on administrative affairs who are in direct contact with citizens.

The continuation of the implementation of this program is based on measurable evaluation results, which continuously show a significant improvement in participants’ knowledge after the training, thereby directly contributing to the strengthening of institutional capacities for the protection of human rights in Serbia.