Local Documentation Centers in the Western Balkans

About this grant

The project goal is to increase civic engagement on issues of truth, justice, and reconciliation in the Western Balkans. To this end, SENSE – Central European News Service Ltd. will support the establishment of one local documentation center in Pristina, Kosovo, and two online, interactive documentation sites. The center and the online sites will provide access to information and testimony from the proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague to a wide range of stakeholders. The grantee will draw from its archive of audiovisual material gathered from its regular monitoring of the tribunal’s proceedings since 1998, as well as its daily and weekly reports and analyses of the tribunal’s work. During 2014-2015, the grantee provided content and technical assistance on its presentation to the first local documentation center in the Balkans in the town of Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the scene of the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995. The grantee also organized exhibitions of certain elements of the content of this center in Zagreb and Belgrade, and it launched the first online documentation site, which focused on the events surrounding the Croatian military offensive in August 1995. The grantee is registered in Zagreb, Croatia, and works mainly from its offices at the tribunal in The Hague.