Last month, the Post Conflict Research Center and Sarajevo Memorial Center organized the inaugural International Youth School Prijedor in May 2024. The school included a visit to the Tomašica mass grave, an international conference on the use of detention camps, and participation in the White Armband Day memorial walk.
During the War in BiH, places of everyday life suddenly turned into epicenters of the most horrendous crimes imaginable. Schools and factories were transformed into campsites that were used to detain the civilian population and inflict collective trauma. The infamous camps in the Keraterm tile factory and the local school in Trnopolje offer insightful examples for analyzing the Bosnian Serb camp system during the war.
The fifth edition of the Srebrenica Youth School, held from 7-12 July in the historic eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, was organized jointly by the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) and the Srebrenica Memorial Center (SMC). This annual event continues to serve as a pivotal platform for young leaders and activists to engage deeply with issues of remembrance, prevention, and peacebuilding.
As early as 1992, the world had become aware of and alarmed by the sexual violence being committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, and sought to establish a tribunal that would bring perpetrators to justice.
Digital platforms pose huge challenges to reckoning with the past in the Balkans. Experts in transitional justice from the former Yugoslavia sounded the alarm at the Post Conflict Research Center (PCRC)’s conference on atrocity prevention “Building a Common Agenda for Prevention in the Western Balkans”. Their alarm, expressed in the conference held on 21-22 March in Podgorica, Montenegro, was concerned with the issue of genocide denial and distorted narratives on social media.
Healing from the past in the Western Balkans requires building a common narrative of the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. Key tools to help achieve this include education and the proper addressing of intergenerational trauma. 25 years after the final guns fell silent in Kosovo, this goal is yet to be fully realized.