Donor: Delegation of the European Commission, German Embassy in Belgrade and Ron Brown Foundation
Duration of the project: March 2007 – March 2008
This project lasted one year and was realised in ten schools in Serbia. Ministry Education of Serbia provided the written support for the activities on the project. In the firs phase of the project booklet on world major religions was produced. The authors of the book are Dino Abazovic, teaching assistant the Sarajevo University Faculty of Philosophy and Prof. Milan Vukomanovic, professor at the Belgrade University Faculty of Philosophy (Sociology Chair) and Jelena Radojkovic from the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights. After publishing the booklet as a material for the seminar ten two-day seminars were held in Kovačica, Subotica, Požarevac, Prijepolje, Bujanovac, Dimitrovgrad, Negotin, Šabac, Čačak and Vladičin han. About 400 students attended seminars. Local coordinators were chosen among the teaching staff by school principles. They also attended the seminars or part of them, while those of them who are not teachers of civic education, encouraged their colleagues to participate. The programmes of the seminars covered the widest possible range of human rights issues (both – civic and political rights as well as economic and social rights) but also practical information about the protection of human rights. The programmes covered the following topics: what are human rights, system of protection of human rights, stereotypes and prejudices – road to human rights violations, prohibition of discrimination, freedom of expression, hate speech, rights to privacy, economic and social rights in societies in transition, freedom of association, religious freedoms. The lecturers at the seminars were young lawyers with experience in lecturing to this target group and advocating for human rights related issues.
After the seminars, the students were divided into teams and encouraged to participate in the later stages of the project. Each team got a disposal camera and was tasked with photographing a human right (in positive or negative context) in their local community. Ms. Goranka Matic (editor of photography in daily newspaper Politika), Mr. Branislav Dimitrijevic (Assistant Minister of Culture for International Cooperation) and Mr. Marko Karadzic (State Secretary of the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights) were the members of the jury for the evaluation of students’ works and final competition. The final event of the project took place in Belgrade in the Centre for Cultural Decontamination and it lasted two days, on 14-15 March 2009. It included the exhibition of the students’ photographs and a competition. The students were tasked with presenting to the jury the specific traits of their community in the context of human rights. The teams were surprisingly well prepared – some of them had special costumes, special make up, some were extremely creative in their performances, etc. Having in mind the number of participants and limited time, each team had exactly 5 minutes for the presentation. The best team was from Dimitrovgrad (Sanja Petrov, Ivana Petrov, Dragana Pešaković and Jelena Andonov), second was from Kovačica (Milica Arlujaj, Jelena Vujasin, Jelena Daskaloski, Žolt Senti and Novak Beljić), third was from Negotin (Nemanja Marinović, Tamara Tampulović and Ivana Ristić) and fourth from Šabac (Aleksandar Apostolovski, Milica Marković, Aleksandar Milanović and Ana Kostadinović)
The awards (lap-tops) were handed to all members of the winning teams by: Prof. Vojin Dimitrijević (director of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights), H.E. Haakon Blankenborg (Ambassador of Norway), Mr. Marko Karadžić (State Secretary, Ministry of Human and Minority Rights), Mr. Thomas Gnocchi (Head of Political Section, Delegation of the European Commission in Serbia) and Mr. Eric Collings (Political Officer, US Embassy Belgrade).
The media coverage of the final event was satisfactory. News agencies Fonet and Beta have sent their representatives, while B92 had on their web page article about the event and rather long report on the prime time and last TV news on 15 March.
