At today's press conference, CEDEM presented the results of the Political Public Opinion of Montenegro, which was conducted in the period from July 1st until July 13th, 2019.

As in the previous years, when important political events are in question, CEDEM conducted a poll in order to identify the attitudes of the citizens of Montenegro on certain key socio-political issues, and the specific goal is to continuously monitor trends over a longer period of time through standardized research indicators. As a result, the following indicators have a central place in CEDEM's research: EU and NATO support, citizens' trust in state institutions, government, political and/or public figures, political parties ratings, i.e. indicators that belong to the corpus of standard measurements in the domain of political public opinion of Montenegro.

The results of the poll were presented by Ms. Milena Bešić, Director of CEDEM and Mr. Ognjen Marković, Programme Manager.

 Results of the Political Public Opinion Poll are avaiable here.

CEDEM publishes the results of the research on the socio-economic situation of women victims of violence, realized within the project "Initiative for the empowerment of women: education for gender equality", which CEDEM conducts in partnership with the Montenegrin Women's Lobby- CŽL, with the support of the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights. Montenegro has recognized the problem of violence and is faced with and treated daily through the work of its institutions. However, despite the fact that there is a system for combating violence and that every institution and all employees in it strive to do their job properly and to the end, there seems to be much more work to be done in this, certainly tough fight and won. By focusing exclusively on the acts carried out by the perpetrator, the state places the unjustly violator in the center of attention, while he leaves the victim "free to leave" without the necessary support and protection, at least during that time "until" the pronouncement of the verdict, and very often and later, because punishments are too blatant and do not achieve the goal. It is necessary to establish a complete system of burden of victims of violence, to establish a crisis center and a safe house as soon as possible, to work on the interconnection and cooperation of all institutions involved in the fight against violence, but also on prevention, education, and specialization.

These are just some of the research findings, and you can download the entire research here.

Over the past year, CEDEM has implemented a range specter of activities within the project "Improving Local Media Practices in Combating Corruption and Organized Crime" with the aim of strengthening the capacity of local media representatives in reporting on corruption and organized crime cases. The project was realized in cooperation with Mirjana Jevtovic from the Insider network from Serbia. After the training in November, a very intensive three-month mentoring period followed and seven research stories emerged as a result of this process.

We appreciate that all the topics suggested by journalists and their editors are very important for the whole society and that as such they have interested the wider and professional public of local communities.

The stories were published on web sites of media that took part in this project, namely:

• Radio Bar, portal barinfo.me - Topic “Analysis of the misconduct of different actors: Palmin scrounger” - circumstances of the problem, description of all events and actions of the municipalities bordering Bar, description of the procedure that the competent institutions should take in accordance with the applicable regulations, decisions in in this regard, the identification of specific non-compliance with the orders of the competent persons.
• Vijesti.me - Topic: "Bar Waterfront" - An overview of the project that the municipality commissioned and paid for and which never came to realization, with a presentation of all the municipality's lessons regarding the project.
• TV Teuta and the portal teutatv.me - Theme “Solana” - An overview of the current state of affairs and a chronological account of what Solana used to be, what it went through in the privatization process, and what decisions are made so far.
• RTV Pljevlja - Topic: "Nonpayment of Contributions - Coal Mine Case" - Timeline of events, description of legal frameworks for collecting local taxes a decade or more back.
• Pljevlja Portal (www.pvnovine.com) - Topic "Agricultural Cooperative - Doganje" - Chronological description through media archives and decisions of the state regarding privatization or change of status of the cooperative, who owns and how the land could be abducted from the cooperatives.
• Radio Berane and the Radio Berane portal - "The Problem of Juvenile and Contracted Roma Marriages" - key information on the NGO's conclusions to date and a story from the inside, not from the perspective of existing NGO reports.
• Radio Skala and the Radio Skala portal - Topic: "Destruction of the marine property" - Chronological account of recent events - media archive of two cases in which the marine property was transferred into private property.

The project was funded in part by the US Embassy in Podgorica. The opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the State Department / US Government.

More than 60 percent of citizens would support Montenegro's accession to the European Union (EU) in a referendum; nearly a third of them believe that Montenegro is moving as fast as circumstances allow and expects the country to become a member of the Union by 2025, and more than half believe that young people would benefit by joining the community.

This was announced at a press conference by the Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM), marking Europe Day and presenting the results of public opinion polls and citizens' knowledge of Montenegro's negotiation process with the EU and the EU in general. The survey involved 773 respondents and was conducted from April 15 to 30 this year.

The results were presented by CEDEMs Director Milena Besic, and Project Coordinator Marko Pejovic.

The research was conducted as part of the project "Education and Dialogue to the EU", which was financially supported by the Ministry of Public Administration.

CEDEM, in cooperation with the project partner Center for Anti-Discrimination - "EQUISTA", within the project "Empowerment of professional capacities to combat discrimination against persons with disabilities", supported by the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, published the results of the research "The situation of persons with disabilities in Montenegro: identification of practices and patterns of discrimination ”.

Participants in the group interview (which was used as a research method, with up to 8 to13 participants each) were relevant representatives of the institutions, which are in various ways involved in the field of inclusion and protection against discrimination of persons with disabilities, non-governmental organizations and persons with disabilities - as individuals.

The topics formulated and guided by the group interview are • general problems of persons with disabilities in Montenegro;• Appearance forms, frequency, and experiences related to the problem of discrimination against persons with disabilities;• Attitudes and practices of competent institutions when it comes to combating discrimination against persons with disabilities.