Young people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro have gathered this month for the two-week Youth Academy “State of Peace,” organized by the European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in cooperation with the Post-Conflict Research Center.
Religious leaders from four different religions—located within just 400 meters of one another in Sarajevo, often called the "European Jerusalem"—delivered a unified message to participants of the youth academy “State of Peace” - that peace can only be built together.
In recent years, an increasing number of migrants have arrived from Africa and the Middle East to Europe, seeking better economic opportunities and an escape from conflict in their home countries.
The Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC), Impunity Watch, and the Western Balkans Coalition for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Crimes Prevention organized the second regional conference titled “Prevention in the Western Balkans: Countering Denial and Hate Speech.”
Fifteen young journalists and activists attended training on the basics of journalism, photography, and storytelling. They were officially certified as youth correspondents on the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Balkan Diskurs multimedia platform. With mentorship, they will have the opportunity to publish articles on socially significant topics that interest them through the Balkan Diskurs platform.
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.