This piece originally appeared on New York Transatlantic.
NEW YORK—By law in Bosnia-Herzegovina, individuals cannot be discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation, hate crimes are illegal and there is no constitutional limit on marriage. Yet when two dozen Bosnians marched in the first unofficial pride parade last June (as no official parade has been permitted by the state), they were met with spitting and shouting.
Casual homophobia and violence are commonplace for LGBTQ people in the Western Balkans. On paper, most of these states have made advances in LGBTQ human rights protections, but this is misleading, argued Brian Silva and Jasmin Mujanović during a Center for European and Mediterranean Studies workshop on Wednesday.
Silva—of Marriage Equality USA—and Mujanović—York University, Toronto—remarked that most of these states face an implementation gap. This has allowed hate crimes to go unreported or unprosecuted. LGBTQ youths remain closeted and homophobia unopposed.
The Western Balkans offer moderate protections, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association in Europe (ILGA-Europe). Yet these measures, and the work of LGBTQ advocates in the region, focus almost solely on the creation of legal protections, Silva said.
“The infrastructure that was in place was all about lobbying and working with parliament, getting an ombudsman created, getting meetings with parliamentarians,” Silva said of the advocacy in Slovenia, “because at the end of the day that’s how law gets passed.”
Activists have found willing partners among many of the political parties because European Union integration—a shared aspiration—is dependent on adherence to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which includes nondiscrimination on the basis of sex or sexual orientation. As much a cultural experiment as an economic one, admission to the EU remains the main motivating factor for these laws, above genuine intention to change, Silva said.
New legislation has fallen into an implementation gap. “If you look at the legal codex of Bosnia or Montenegro or Macedonia,” Mujanović said, “you’ll actually find that these countries have incredibly expansive human rights, gender protection, LGBT rights. The laws are all there: they’re just not being enforced.”