For the fourth year running, the State of Peace Youth Academy, organized by the European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in cooperation with the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC), has brought together young people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro with a goal of strengthening dialogue, mutual understanding and lasting peace.
In a region where history is so often told as competing, mutually exclusive stories, the fourth “State of Peace” Youth Academy set out to test a different premise: that different experiences of the past don't have to produce separate futures.
For the young people gathered across Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) this week for the fourth “State of Peace” Youth Academy, the European Union is not an abstract policy framework, it's a lived, daily question.
The European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in partnership with the Post-Conflict Research Centre, is organising the fourth State of Peace Youth Academy, taking place from 31 July to 13 August 2026.
Once a well-known iron ore mine, after 1992, the name Omarska became synonymous with the most notorious detention camp where Bosniaks and Croats from the Prijedor area were tortured and killed.