Selected Essays by Young Authors (Vol. 1)
This is the first collection of selected essays by the authors who attended the courses and seminars the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia organized in 2004. Within the three-year project “Building up Democracy and Good Governance in Multiethnic Communities” that is being implemented with the assistance of the European Union, twelve 5-day “schools of democracy” and eight 3-day seminars under the common title “Life and Living in Multiethnic Environments” were held in 2004 in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac and Novi Pazar. Over 500 trainees attended these courses and seminars. The project is aimed at capacitating young people – by the means of attractive and interactive courses of training – not only for a life in multiethnic communities that are particularly burdened with the adverse experience of the recent past, mutual distrust and stereotypes, but also for a life in the conditions that mark a modern democracy and reflect its standards. An objective as such implies, among other things, rational perception of notions, developments and trends that are in Serbia still blurred, marginalized and subject to relativism or, moreover, to various and even misguiding interpretations. The Helsinki Committee’s experience testifies this is all about a process that takes time but is worthy of effort – the more so since young people, as evidenced by the selected writings as well, fully perceive it as an imperative need of their own.
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