About us - Center for History, Democracy and Reconciliation

ABOUT US

Mission

The road to reconciliation that is based on the 20th – century history is shown only to those who have reconciled with their own past.

Shared Narrative is one of the possible directions to reconciliation that requires each participant to leave behind one’s own biases and prejudices.

Taking this path means going toward the past from which we can learn something for our future.

PhD. Darko Gavrilovic,
Director of CHDR

Background ideas

From the beginning of the 20th century, the process of modernization of the societies in the Western and mid Balkans (i.e, ex – Yugoslav countries) was focused on the state. At the same time, civil society was forgotten. This continuing lack of civil society in the region requires the urgent initiation of projects that will change the current post-conflict situation. During the 20th century, the peoples of the former Yugoslavia survived two world wars that both divided and united them, and were characterized by war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing. They shared a common history in two Yugoslav states which ended in fragmentation and the creation of new national states. Unfortunately, the most enduring and bloody of the ethnic crises at the end of the 20th century in Europe occurred in Yugoslavia, where in 1991 festering differences once again resulted in war, barbarity, hatred, fear and rampant chauvinism.