Buried bodies were what was found when the renovation of what was later to become the Human Rights House of Sarajevo began in 1997. The Human Rights House, established on money provided from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was opened in the wake of the war in Bosnia. Previously, it had served as an interrogation and torture centre. This week, representatives from all the Human Rights House Foundation’s houses gather in Sarajevo, among other things to make preparations for an international conference to take place in Oslo in October on human rights defenders’ deteriorating working conditions and general security. (30-JUNE-04)
The Human Rights House Foundation’s network currently consists of ten houses, five established and five under establishment. In each of these houses, several organisations work together to help victims of human rights abuses and prevent further violations All together, the network consists of approximately one hundred organisations.
The meeting convening in Sarajevo tomorrow is funded by the Norwegian MFA, who also covers some of the salary and equipment costs related to getting this network up and running. The idea is to facilitate exchange of news, knowledge and experience as efficiently as possible, and also make possible rapid responses by a wide and international selection of human rights organisations to human rights violations. Finally, the meeting will provide training for all participants in web journalism and also give guidelines on other media and information related work.
Both nationally and internationally, the Human Rights House in Sarajevo has come to be considered as crucial for the attempts to resolve Bosnia’s ethnic, political and religious differences. Every year, several thousand people get free legal aid from the Helsinki Committee on Human Rights, one of the five organisations in the house, who, individually and jointly, play key parts in the rebuilding of Bosnia as a credible state of law and a stable democracy. Srdjan Dizdarevic, the Director of the Human Rights House in Sarajevo, says that more than 25.000 people contacted the house in the course of its first four years of existence. During the 2002 elections, it was the Human Rights House that coordinated the election observation and a host of other democratising initiatives carried out by more than a hundred different organisations.
-Civil society in Bosnia and Herzegovina has benefitted enormously from the establishment of a Human Rights House here in Sarajevo, continues Dizdarevic. –The house has become a meeting place for people and organisations of different ethnic, political and religious origin and association. In the house, we cooperate to generate new ideas on how we can strengthen our society’s respect for human rights and the democratisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This house gives a lot of people hope!
Literally rising from the ashes and ruins of the Balkan wars of the nineties, the Human Rights House in Sarajevo has become a key member of the Human Rights House Foundation’s network, which, in addition to its secretariat in Oslo, also includes Human Rights Houses in Moscow, Warsaw and Bergen. Similar houses are under establishment in Zagreb, Minsk, Baku, Nairobi, Kampala and London.
For further information, look up the Human Rights House Foundation’s website at www.humanrightshouse.org. Alternatively, please contact Project Manager Niels Jacob Harbitz at + 47 22 47 92 45 / + 47 915 26 584 or niels.jacob@humanrightshouse.org
The Human Rights House in Sarajevo is to be rwached at +387 33 660 811. Please also contact Srdjan Dizdarevic at s.dizdarevic@bh-hchr.org or the new network coordinator of the Sarajevo Human Rights House; Mirsad Pandic at +387 61 351 753 / mirsad@bh-hchr.org.
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