Milan Filipović, Director of Research at the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM), participated in a regional consultative meeting in Vienna on May 29, 2023, at the invitation of Clemont Voule, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association.
The main goal of this meeting, which brought together representatives of civil society organizations from European and Central Asian countries and ODIHR, was to develop practical tools that would help the police promote and protect human rights during peaceful protests, per UN HRC Resolution 50/21. During the meeting, the participants exchanged experiences in monitoring peaceful gatherings, identified challenges, and discussed successful and promising practices applied by the police in their countries. Also, during the talks, worrying trends in the use of police force during peaceful gatherings were noticed, both in the authoritarian countries of Central Asia and in the democratic countries that are members of the European Union.
The consultative meeting organized in collaboration with OHCHR and UNODC provided an opportunity for the special rapporteur to familiarize himself with the situation regarding freedom of assembly in Serbia before his upcoming visit to our country.
