REPORT „Stronger Together – Football Unites“ Workshop on “Gender Equality and International Dialogue in the Balkans” Bar, Montenegro, 15 November 2012 Contents: 1. Workshop 2. Partners 3. Contact 1. Workshop The international workshop taking place in Bar, Montenegro on 15 November 2012 was the sixth event in this vein during the 3-year project phase FairPlay-VIDC and the Balkan Alpe Adria Project (BAAP) organised in cooperation with the Council of Europe/EPAS (Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport) and the Montenegrin Football association. UEFA, the King Baudouin Foundation and FARE (Football Against Racism in Europe) supported the workshop. This year’s workshop lead by the campaign’s motto “Stronger Together – Football Unites” tackled the question of “Gender Equality and International Dialogue in the Balkans”. Regional and international stakeholders, project partners, representatives of NGOs as well as the general audience came together in Bar to discuss on this topic and exchange best practice examples. Momir Djurdjevac, general secretary of the Montenegrin football association and Igor Vucinic of the Montenegrin Justice and Human Rights Department welcomed the audience. 1 Gender Equality and International Dialogue in the Balkans The official welcome has been followed by the Opening Session: Jovan Kojicic, Advisor to the Prime Minister of Human Rights presented ongoing projects of the Montenegrin ministry for HR on “Gender Equality” and underlined that those can be only successfully realised with support by local authorities and the institutions such as the Council of Europe. He also stressed that events like the international workshop offer a good opportunity to deal with relevant topics. Sonia Parayre who represented EPAS, Strasbourg, talked about the sport policy of EPAS focusing on women in sports. This is a much discussed topic, as to Sonia Parayre, but it is about time to take action as the situation of sportswomen and women in general is still rather bad. Patrick Gasser, in charge for UEFA’s Football and Social Responsibility portfolio, emphasized an increase of women in football. For now, the UEFA committee counts 22 women in leading positions which is a good beginning, according to Mr. Gasser, but needs to be improved in the future. Besides the European Football Championship, UEFA’s Women’s EURO taking place in Sweden in 2013 will offer a good opportunity to promote women’s football. Ann de Mol from the Belgian King Baudouion Foundation presented the organisation’s field of work, especially focusing on projects in the Balkans. From 2005 to 2012, the King Baudouin Foundation backed over 238 projects aimed at fighting racism and discrimination in football. Piara Powar attended the international workshop as representative of FARE. He mentioned some violent incidents during football matches in Europe which casted a negative light on football. He stressed that good cooperative work leads to positive results in the fight for tolerance and equality, bringing up the FARE Action Week as an example. Last, Ivana Milosevic from the Balkan Alpe Adria Project (BAAP) and Selma Kustura representing FairPlay-VIDC, talked about projects in the Balkans such as the Balkaniade, the tournament Vienna meets Balkan and further activities against discrimination the two organisations realised together and also in cooperation with local partners and the football associations of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, FYRO Macedonia and Montenegro. For the next project phase the focus will be put stronger on including girls and women into the activities in order to foster gender equality in sports in the Balkan region. The following discussion was opened by Zeljko Blace from Q-Sport Croatia asking “How women’s position in sports can be improved by the UEFA and how this can be realised at all”. The second question came from Zdravko Cimbaljevic from the Montenegrin LGBT forum who asked “What the UEFA did in regard to gender equality and what the UEFA’s standing towards the gay population is”. 2 Patrick Gasser answered both questions pointing out that UEFA is tackling all kinds of discrimination. For this reason the UEFA organised a workshop on this very topic. The fight against discrimination is an inevitable issue which is on the daily agenda of the UEFA, stated Mr. Gasser. Challenges in the fight against discrimination in football In the Roundtable discussion the representatives of the football associations debated on “Challenges in the fight against discrimination in football”. Momir Djurdjevac from the Montenegrin football association underlined that the fight against discrimination and racism in football is an issue the association is taking very seriously. This was shown –not least– at the beginning of the game Montenegro vs. San Marino. Regarding the promotion of gender equality, he quoted a ratio of 45 to 48 % of women holding positions within the association which can be regarded as an improvement. Drasko Braunovic, from the Montenegrin FA as well, took the opportunity to present activities the association is implementing in cooperation with FairPlay-VIDC and BAAP mentioning the Balkaniade, the youth tournament Vienna meets Balkan and the international conference being hosted by the FA of Montenegro in Bar this year. The FA of Bosnia-Herzegovina was represented by Nermina Hadzibajric who is coordinating the development programmes of women’s football in the country. Ms. Hadzibajric underlined that the work would not have been such a success without the support of UEFA. As to the number of women in the FA, she said that out of 33 employees in the FA, 11 are women but none of them fill a leading position. Regarding the Bosnian-Herzegovinian football there are three selections in football and the aim is to involve more women into the football sport. Further problems, besides the fact that women are outnumbered in sports, are the divided leagues of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. Thanks to a project backed by the UEFA the leagues will be unified in the coming season. Also it is very important to promote women’s football as it happened during this year’s Women’s football festival with 350 participants, Ms. Hadzibajric said. Igor Jankovic from the Serbian FA emphasised the relevance of UEFA’s support when it comes to fostering women’s football which the FA is working on 3 intensively at the moment. He presented a project encouraging the foundation of football clubs and including boys and girls equally into sports: a project including a wide range of activities which should be realised in a period over 10 years. Regarding gender equality, the Serbian FA has established a commission and workgroup that is in charge for developing strategies for women’s and girls’ inclusion into football. One of the plans is to integrate girls into boys’ teams even though they are two years older than their male colleagues. Concerning gender aspects within the Serbian FA, 50% of 130 employees are women, also holding leading positions. At the end of the session, Ivan Anastasovski from the football association of the FYR of Macedonia who also chaired the “Roundtable” brought up the idea to establish a football association for all Balkan countries. The general idea would be to hand over the lead to UEFA while each member country would have a bureau for launching programmes against racism and discrimination in football. Tackling Gender Discrimination in Sport The third session chaired by Michael Fanizadeh (VIDC) was dedicated to the topic “Tackling Gender Discrimination in Sport”. Marko Begovic from the Montenegrin Students Sport Association introduced the study “Gender and Sport in Montenegro”. This study which is the first on this topic in Montenegro he worked on as co-autor. The main problem in the Montenegrin landscape of sports, as to Marko Begovic, is the lack of physical activity in schools: only 600 children, predominantly girls, go in for sports in their school and, at the same time, they do not have the possibility to participate in sport competitions as the offer is rather poor. “Everybody, from the parents to the teachers, should be involved in the integration of children into sports”, he stated in his conclusion. Jovana Mrkic, vice-captain of the national women’s football team of Montenegro, explained that 2012 has been the most important year in regard to the progress of women’s football in her country. Especially, trainers and directors who were willing to do volunteer work made a big contribution to that success. In Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, women are active in particular in handball and taekwondo, said Nedzad Vuk from the Sport Association of the City of Mostar, stressing that fostering women’s football is now the association’s priority. Zeljko Blace from the organisation Q-Sport and LGBT activist in Croatia pointed out that regarding gender as well as sexual equality in the Balkans a lot of work needs to be done in future. From FairPlay-VIDC, Nikola Staritz who is in charge for the Football for Equality project, presented the organisation’s activities in the fight against racism, homophobia, nationalism and intolerance backing Zeljko Blace’s statement for the need of a stronger engagement of NGOs in terms of LGBT rights in sports. EPAS/Council of Europe was represented by Sonia Parayre. At the beginning Ms. Parayre underlined that we must use the power and popularity of football to promote human rights, tolerance of diversity and the fight of discrimination. This can and should be realised also through other sports. As to Sonia Parayre, sport clubs act out as bridges connecting people through sports. Even though human rights came to force 60 years ago, European organisations cannot put enough effort into 4 promoting HR – ideally in cooperation with partner organisations operating on different levels. Interactive workshop sessions The interactive workshop session in the afternoon was divided into two parts.