Youth Activists From Serbia and Kosovo Visit HLC

A group of youth activists from Serbia and Kosovo visited the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) on November 15^th, 2016. They are visiting the relevant institutions and organizations in Serbia and Kosovo as part of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights programme „LinKS – Linking Kosovo and Serbia“, and in the process, looking at political and social aspects of the relations between the two countries and creating recommendations for the development of their mutual relations.

The HLC Outreach and Fundraising Director, Jelena Krstić, talked with the visitors about the long-lasting endeavours by the HLC to shed light on the importance of achieving justice for crimes committed during the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. In reference to this, she pointed to the lack of an official strategical framework for dealing with the past, insufficiently efficient prosecution of individuals responsible for the commission of war crimes, the neglect of victims’ right to reparation, and the apathetic position of the society as a whole in relation to the crimes committed. The youth activists were particularly intrigued by the wide-spread impunity for war crimes, and they also discussed the ways in which victims of human rights violations in Serbia can acquire compensation for damages and public acknowledgment, the position of the media with regard to the crimes, the engagement of institutions, and civil society initiatives for establishing the truth about the crimes and victims.