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Description
Existing legal mechanisms are vague and neglect civilian victims of war. The process of building social trust slows down ineffective resolution of missing persons, inefficient judiciary, poor institutional and social support with hints of intolerance and hate speech. Our goal is to strengthen civil society and vulnerable groups in the process of humanizing attitudes towards victims of war and human rights violations, regardless of their national, ethnic or political affiliation, and to mobilize stronger social and political support for effective search for missing persons, recognition of the rights of families of killed and other civilian victims, including stronger prosecution of war crimes.
Target groups include victims of the wars of the 20th century with their families, lawyers, representatives of the judiciary, legislature and the executive, students and researchers, media, professional and general public. Key activities: support to victims and survivors (filling out questionnaires about victims, writing case studies, etc.), support for more efficient war crimes prosecutions (trial monitoring etc.), public advocacy for the rights of civilian victims of war (meetings with judicial institutions, writing comments on bills, etc.), better history teaching and empowering of young people to deal with the past (workshops on recording local histories, mentoring support, etc.) and strong public advocacy in the form of crowdfunding and smaller advocacy campaigns.
Added value of the project partner is long term experience in human rights protection, free legal aid and support to victims of the war, participation in the peaceful integration of citizens from occupied territories etc.
It is expected to have an impact on the practice of the culture of remembrance in Croatia, a more humane approach to war victims, a safer environment to discuss the fate of victims, networking of various stakeholders with greater social understanding and institutional transparency.