Love Will Save Us!

The Youth Center CK13, Youth Initiative for Human Rights - Montenegro and Youth Center 'KVART' Prijedor invite you to apply for participation in the Regional Political School on the 90s: "LOVE WILL SAVE US!" which will take place from September 15 to 21 in Sremski Karlovci for participants from Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia.
If you are between 18 and 30 years old and live in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Croatia, if you feel the need and have the will to change the world for the better – apply! Through this school, we want to encourage you to participate in building fairer societies and sustainable peace in the region by establishing and maintaining new social relationships based on the principles of reconciliation, friendship, and love as political principles for building lasting peace. The name of the school 'Love Will Save Us! - an anti-war graffiti from Zagreb - is our dedication to the love policies of the 90s, policies that we continue.

How much do we know about the crimes committed in our name? Who are our sources of information? How did the collapse of Yugoslav society into nationalism, war, and crimes happen and unfold? Why does this concern us young people today? What heritage do we carry? How and where do we learn about crimes? What do our parents and the state tell us? What do we say among ourselves?
War conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and countless victims of war crimes are not a 'dark past' that can be suppressed and forgotten. On the contrary, denial, forgetting, and ignoring crimes are strategies for their perpetuation. In social-political and existential terms, crimes continue today as personal and transgenerational traumas, as a past we refuse to remember, empathetically, informatively, and responsibly, as a present we do not understand.
Bringing together young people from Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia, the aim of the Regional Political School on the 90s: 'Love Will Save Us!' is to provide young people with reliable sources of knowledge and credible testimonies about the crimes and places of suffering in Yugoslavia during the wars of the 90s, about the perpetrators, victims, and survivors, about the heavy and deep legacy of these conflicts and crimes that are passed on to current and future generations. Acquiring this knowledge will help young people better understand their present, as well as the origin and causes of what hinders their free self-realization as individuals and in the community with other Others. Through informal education and conversations with witnesses of the time, the participants of the school will familiarize themselves with the historical and socio-political context and facts about the conflict, war crimes, and genocide in former Yugoslavia. At the same time, participants will learn about the challenges of seeking justice after the most terrible sufferings, learning about the concept and processes of transitional justice, facing the past, and the culture of remembrance. Finally, participants will get to know their peers from the region and thus deeply question and penetrate the prevailing policies of nationalist prejudices, exclusivity, and hatred that still keep the entire region in an untransformed past. We believe that by doing this together, we will be able to strengthen our own capacities for doing good and succeed in thinking and creating paths of peace, which is possible only when we accept and do what measures our humanity: promise eternal memory to the victims, promise justice to the survivors, promise peace to others and ourselves.