The Joint Committee for Human Rights of the BIH Parliamentary Assembly will debate, on Monday, July 6, 2009, the draft-Law on Prevention of Discrimination and the amendments to the text, after which it will present the House of Representatives and House of Nations with a report. Amendments can be submitted by MPs, Committees, the institution that prepared the Law, and the Council of Ministers.

The Hose of Representatives will conduct the second reading of the Draft in a session on July 8, and then the Law will go to the House of Nations. Both Houses have to adopt an identical text of the Draft.

A heated and difficult debate is expected having in mind that conservative MPs and political parties have already attacked the proposed Draft.

Alma Čolo, MP for the Party for Democratic Action (SDA) and Member of Joint Committee on Human Rights, Children Rights, Youth, Immigration, Refugees, Asylum and Ethics and the working group on the Law on Gender Equality, said in the first reading of the Law that she objected to the wording of Article 2 which she saw as over-legislated.

"The ‘others’ status can be used to cover all those things I don’t like, like these phrases sexual expression and sexual orientation. I say openly that I don't want those phrases in the Law. I believe they both should fall in under that st”tus of 'others’ and we can do it”, Čolo said.

*****

Slovenian Government of the centre-left announced yesterday that it considers adoption of legislation that will legalize homosexual marriages in the country. According to Katarina Kresal, Minister of the Interior, the law is intended to give same-sex couples same or similar rights to those reserved for heterosexual couples, as soon as possible.

The 2006 Civil Law allows homosexual couples to enter a contract that represents some form of marriage union, especially in terms of transfer and inheritance of property and mutual expenses.