The ICTY Outreach programme today organised a workshop for a group from Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR), an organisation which will be implementing the series of high school presentations about the Tribunal in Croatian high schools.
Almir Alić, ICTY Registry Liaison Officer, presented different experiences from the previous three cycles of the project to the future trainers and spoke about the challenges encountered in interactions with high school students from across the region. Almir pointed out that the reactions of high school students to this kind of initiative have been overwhelmingly positive during the project implementation so far.
Six YIHR members with extensive experience in the transitional justice field agreed that it is extremely important for young people to face the past in order to revitalise relations between communities in the former Yugoslavia. The significance of such education was recognised by YIHR member Joco Glavaš: “Securing international justice provides a guarantee that the crimes we have witnessed throughout history will not happen again”.
Transferring project activities related to the Tribunal’s legacy to partner organisations in the region forms part of the work of the Tribunal’s Outreach Programme in the final years of its operations. The training of NGO representatives to hold presentations independently about the work of the ICTY will allow them to make use of this knowledge in their future projects.