Donor: Open Society Fund
Duration of the project: March – September 2004
Project started in 2003 and was prolonged in 2004 because of the great success and interest for it’s prolongation the project lasted another six months. The purpose of this project was to raise the level of legal culture with primary and secondary school students as well as municipality officials and civil servants by educating them in human rights, rule of law, separation of powers and independence of judiciary. Lecturers were human rights experts and judges.The implementation of this project was envisaged through branch offices of the Association of Judges of Serbia (AJS). Since 2004 there were 20 offices of the AJS throughout Serbia, and 10 of them took part in this project: Novi Pazar, Zaječar, Vranje, Požarevac, Obrenovac, Mladenovac, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, Zrenjanin i Pančevo. Each office of the AJS was in charge of two courses: one for students and other for local civil servants. Approximately 30 participants attended each course, which means that 1.200 persons attended this programmes (600 students and 600 local civil servants).
Participants were introduced to general notion of human rights and the rule of law, the role of independent judiciary in democratic society, and important issues of the region in question or society in whole would be discussed (e.g. trafficking in human beings, AIDS, abuse of narcotics, etc).
