Leaving No One Behind in Montenegro

by Anđela Radovanović – IF member in Montenegro

Montenegro, a country in southeast Europe, on the Adriatic Sea, is a beautiful homeland to about 62.0000 people. About 10% of them (no precise data) are living with some kind of disability. How many people out of those are living with Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus (SBH) is not known either, as unified registers are missing, but it is supposed that one person with Spina Bifida is born every year.

Being a UN member and having an EU candidate status made the country ratify numerous international treaties in the area of human rights, and some progress towards the improvement of disability rights was made.

Of course, a lot of work had to be done, with a wide range of obligatory actions to achieve the recommendations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

However, as it happens sometimes, political processes are strongly influencing the realisation of human rights, and the Montenegrin case was not an exception. After the change of the ruling political option in 2020, many human rights processes were put to the side and the main focus of the governments – there were three of them since that period – was on attempted economic reforms and engagement of political activists and allies on decision-making positions. There were some good tries, like the establishment of the Directorate for Persons with Disabilities in 2021, but it was closed in 2022 and re-established in 2024.

Limited funding and support for the work of organisations of persons with disabilities and their continuous exclusion from decision-making processes significantly reduced possibilities for the voices of persons with disabilities (including those with SBH) to be heard. As there is a very low number of persons with SBH who openly identify themselves like that and even fewer of those who advocate, SBH issues were not on the agenda very often.

Every time right-wing populism is getting stronger, there are significant consequences for human rights. Under the so-called reforms, rights and services are getting underfunded, reduced or completely cancelled. One of the recent examples is the Law on Professional Rehabilitation and Employment of People with Disabilities, repeatedly highlighted in the EU country progress reports as one of the most important laws to be amended. However, its amendments are not addressing problems which need to be solved, and are only making space for even bigger exclusion of persons with disabilities.

Changes in the area of health protection, moving an age limitation for the right to physical rehabilitation in the national rehabilitation facility for people with SBH from 15 years to one year (however, there is goodwill to solve this problem); problems with procurement of medical aids, devices and medicines; reduced health and pension insurance funding – they are all directly affecting the lives of persons with SBH.

As we were taught to fight and to not allow temporary circumstances to prevent us from acting, we will continue our work. Even as individuals publicly speaking, writing and being vocal about our own rights, we will give our best to not leave any person with SBH behind. In Montenegro, or elsewhere in the world.