Vidan Hadzi Vidanovic
Lawyer in European court for Human Rights
“The School completely transformed my life.” With these words began one of the first lectures of the Human Rights School for Future Decision Makers in 2003 when I attended it. Today, I adopt these words of my colleague and friend as my own. I came to the school as a graduate of the Law School which was far more devoted to the career of a television show writer than the law. The dry and uncritical treatment of legal science and dubious political and human attitudes of a large number of lecturers distanced me from the Law School and profession that I had wanted to enter four years earlier. Vojin, Vesna, Tanja, Jelena and everyone else working in the Centre at the time, in only two weeks managed to remind me why, in the time of repression and anti-regime charge I had decided to study law. After the School, I stayed in the Centre until 2007 when, thanks to the professional opportunities offered to me in the Centre, I was awarded a Chevening scholarship and embarked on master’s study in Great Britain, where I have remained working towards a PhD.
Although I’m not in Belgrade, I am still with the Centre. I can’t describe our relationship as collaboration, although we still work on the protection and promotion of human rights. In the Centre, we are above all friends, and that is solely the result of something taught in the School’s first lessons – one does not “work on the protection of human rights”; human rights are values by which we live.
