11.02.2025
The Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) is a regional network of non-governmental organizations with programs in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo.
Since its establishment in 2003, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights has advocated for the same core values.
The Initiative’s fundamental values are truth, justice, accountability, equality, freedom, democracy, and peace. We work for peace in the region—not only the absence of war, but peace as an ongoing process that includes dealing with the past and results in continuous cooperation among countries and people across the region.
We do not accept warmongering politics or the presence of war criminals in the public sphere—we insist on respecting established facts and on the legal as well as moral condemnation of those responsible for crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. We educate young people in the region about the legacy of war, while fostering dialogue about the perspectives of democratic development in our societies.
The Initiative’s activists, aware that there is no democracy without civic activism, protect human rights and do not allow hard-won freedoms to be taken away.
The offices of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights are located in Belgrade, Zagreb, Podgorica, Sarajevo, and Pristina.
The focus of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights is on societies and citizens—especially young people—who are least familiar with the events and war crimes committed during the 1990s, where nationalist ideologies that led to wars still prevail and where all sides celebrate their war criminals as “heroes.”
Through the exchange programs organized by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights since its founding, more than 15,000 high school students, university students, legal professionals, artists, journalists, human rights activists, filmmakers, and writers have participated. Over 15 years of work, the Initiative has issued hundreds of public statements, published more than 30 analytical reports and studies, organized 200 trainings, more than 150 regional exchange programs, and 300 street actions and protests, and has won 15 cases before domestic and international courts.
As a leading voice of young people in the region, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights has so far organized four Youth Summits held in Belgrade, Pristina, Sarajevo, Zagreb, and Skopje. These summits brought together thousands of regional and international civic and political young activists to exchange experiences and to launch processes of democratic reforms. The Youth Summits also encouraged and contributed to the establishment of the Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO), an intergovernmental office of Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Montenegro.
The Youth Initiative for Human Rights has also founded and runs several festivals aimed at connecting young people and encouraging cultural cooperation in the region, such as “Days of Sarajevo in Belgrade” (until 2013) and “Miredita, dobar dan” (since 2014), which presents artists from Kosovo and Serbia in Belgrade and Pristina.
Since its early days, the Initiative has taken part in disputes of public interest. The first judgment for violating the ban on hate speech was issued in September 2008, as a result of proceedings the Initiative launched against the daily newspaper “Glas javnosti” over an advertisement calling for a boycott of a shopping center because the company was from Croatia.
The Initiative also sued the Government of Serbia before the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in favor of the Initiative in 2013 for a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights after the authorities refused to grant access to information held by the Security Information Agency (BIA) in response to a YIHR request filed under the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance. This judgment is important for citizens and Serbia because it confirms that intelligence agencies are subject to the same access-to-information rules as any other public body, and it affirms that NGOs like the Initiative can play a significant role—similar to the media—in protecting the public interest and holding authorities accountable.
The regional network of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights has received numerous national and international awards, including the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize for 2019 awarded by the Council of Europe.