North Macedonia Activists Protest as Court Scraps Anti-Discrimination Law

LGBT and human rights activists in North Macedonia have voiced outrage after the Constitutional Court last week scrapped the new Anti-Discrimination Law passed last year, citing procedural omissions.

The court deemed the voting procedure lacking, saying the law should have been passed by a majority of all 120 MPs in parliament. Instead, it was passed only by a majority of MPs present in the chamber at that time.

Activists say that following their big victory of last year, when the law was passed and for the first time included sexual orientation as grounds for discrimination, the country had now taken a big step backwards.

"With the scrapping of the law, the state and also this government show that LGBTI persons, as well as other marginalised groups, are invisible and unimportant for society. They are again forced to return to living in fear and shame, and to suffering form violence, which they already face on a daily basis," Lila Milic, an activist for sexual workers and transgender persons, said.

Parliament passed the much-anticipated Anti-Discrimination Law in May 2019, and it was soon signed by President Stevo Pendarovski, after which it entered into force.

The key novelty of the law, over which the country was much criticized by international watchdogs in the past, was that it now included sexual orientation as grounds for discrimination.

The new law was seen as a major victory for human rights and was praised by the local LGBT community as well as by the Venice Commission, the EU and the OSCE. It followed almost a decade of resistance to that change by the former ruling conservative VMRO DPMNE party.

VMRO DPMNE was finally ousted from power in mid-2017 and replaced by a Social Democrat-led government which, under the...