STA, 14 December 2018 - The Council of Europe and UNESCO are urging against violence towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender individuals at schools in their latest report, which shows that in Slovenia 43% of young people were subject to this type of violence in 2014.
This can be psychological, physical or sexual violence that happens on school grounds and also on-line. Its most frequent forms are verbal violence and harassment, the CoE says in the report.
Such violence targeting members of the LGBTI community was detected in all CoE countries, most notably in Turkey (67%) and Belgium (47%).
In the section on the situation in Slovenia, the report refers to a 2013 research carried out by the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency.
The survey showed that 59% of the 636 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons "always" or "frequently" heard negative remarks about their classmates' sexual orientation or sexual identity and 30% of them are "always" or "frequently" the targets of such remarks themselves.
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The report also refers to the 2014 survey in which 42.8% of respondents aged between 15 and 30 years reported of at least one experience of a homophobic attack during their education.
Slovenia is among the 32 CoE members that have explicitly banned discrimination based on sexual orientation at schools and is one of the 24 CoE countries that have explicitly banned discrimination based on sexual identity in education.
In 2016, the Slovenian anti-discrimination legislation expanded the list of the types of discrimination banned to discrimination based on sexual identity, while discrimination based on sexual orientation is banned by the Constitution.
The report released on Thursday is based on responses of public sector employees from 35 CoE member states.
The full report, in PDF form, can be read here
