The voices of mine victims

Developed upon past experience of HOPE’87-BiH and its 20 years of comprehensive assistance provided to mine and war victims, this project represented an innovative initiative to enhance participatory democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Specifically, the objective of this project was to strengthen the voice of mine victims in BiH. The project provided benefits for approx. 10,000 mine victims on the territory of the whole country, including both entities, Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska. The problem that the project addressed was that the mine victims’ voice was not heard in BiH. Thus, the strategy aimed at the empowerment of mine victims in order to raise their voice and advocate for the improvement of their living conditions.

The usage of information technologies provided promising opportunities for networking and for the strengthening of advocacy capacities of this disadvantaged group. The project established the “BiH Mine Victims’ Networked Society” with at least 500 mine victims actively involved in it. Besides professionally moderated e-courses, a platform offered a place for networking, as well as an inspirational tool to empower advocacy skills of mine victims from around the country in voicing out their rights in their communities.