Cross-Border Citizens’ Network for Peace, Inter-Communal Reconciliation and Human Security is a joint initiative of CSOs, active in the field of human rights, comprised of the following countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia and Kosovo. Each member organization considers the security issue from its own perspective by focusing on a specific aspect, level (i.e. local, national and regional) and form of activities (i.e. advocacy, grassroots mobilization). The common denominator, however, is that each member of the network strives for a transition from the security-oriented political culture and structure –within their respective environments– towards a more human-centered approach.
The initiative’s goal is to establish a regional network of organizations that focus on issues of human security –not just within countries’ borders, but also at the transnational level. The main reason for this approach lies in the transnational nature of threats to security, such as: illicit economies, organized crime, poverty, social exclusion and extremism. Also, the network aims to achieve structured collaboration between the civil societies, the research community and the advocacy community in order to improve policy making.
In addition to its focus on strengthening social capacity, the initiative also deals with formulating recommendations for political reforms as well as local, regional and EU-based levels of advocacy networking. The activity has resulted in annual monitoring reports in every state and country-specific thematic reports (available at http://cn4hs.org/reports/). Two international academic conferences “Human Security – 20 Years After” (2014) and “Third International Academic Conference on Human Security” (2016) were held in cooperation with the Faculty of Security in Belgrade. In May 2016, a Human Security Forum was held in Sofia, aimed at expanding the Network. The final conference of the project, entitled “Human Security in Dire Times”, was held in Athens in February 2017.
During the project numerous publications were prepared, such as policy briefs in the field of migration, violence against children and trust in institutions; advocacy papers; studies and regional reports on human security; barometer on human security.
Find out about the concept of human security, actors who need to contribute to its realization, approaches and ways of analysis, as well as a number of other issues related to human security through an on-line course, which is available at http://humansecuritycourse.info/.