Two or three times a year, HCHR BH organises courses in human rights. These courses are part of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee´s initiative and co-ordinated effort to develop and arrange such courses and also educate local teaching competence throughout the Balkans and in Norway, too. In 2003 alone, almost twenty such courses were arranged in Croatia, Republika Srpska, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Hercegovina. This latest one, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, began on the  28th of November -03. One week later, the students, selected from schools all over Bosnia, Hercegovina and the Republic of Srpska, received their diplomas . By then, they had attended classes on the UN Declaration and European Convention of Human Rights and Main Freedoms, the last decades´ gross violations of human rights in Bosnia and Hercegovina, the protection of minorities in Bosnia and Hercegovina, aspects of equality and inequality and positive and negative discrimination between men and women, other kinds of discrimination, drug abuse, protection against AIDS, and how to prevent, evade or even avoid and eradicate violence. The course also included a visit to the Human Rights House in Sarajevo where the students were informed about the mandate and purpose, aims and activities of each of the organisations there.

 

The emphasis of the course is to teach the main human rights, but also to provide training in how to live and act together, so as to overcome ethnic, religious, national, ideological or other kinds of differences and instead co-operate for the betterment of all.The lecturers include distinguished professors and NGO members from Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, which in itself serves as living proof that people from every corner of ex Yugoslavia can co-operate and work together.