Project Duration: April 2021-May 2022
Donor: Swiss Embassy in Prishtina
Lead Partner: NGO Aktiv from Kosovska Mitrovica
Partners: European Movement in Serbia
IFDT Research Team: Aleksandar Pavlović, Stefan Gužvica
THE IPST in the period May 2021/ May 2022 realizes the project “Advancing Serbian-Albanian Friendship: Making Available Joint Educative and Reconciliatory Content via Multilingual Portal”. It involves administering and improving a multilingual website Serbian-Albanian Friendship (https://srb-al.emins.org/?lang=en), and is implemented in cooperation with the NGO Aktiv from Kosovska Mitrovica and European Movement in Serbia, with the support of the Swiss Embassy in Prishtina.
The aim of the project is to contribute to reconciliation between Albanians and Serbs by providing an open access online web portal that will provide comprehensive visual, textual and documentary knowledge on Serbian-Albanian relations, which will be available in 3 languages: Serbian, Albanian and English. The portal is designed to challenge currently entrenched hostile perceptions through presenting stories about persons and events which tell different stories from the commonly present, offering evidence of cooperation and collaboration.
This website has been initially launched in 2019 a part of the initiative “Towards the Politics of Serbian-Albanian Friendship“ of the European Movement in Serbia and IFDT, realized through support from the European Fund for the Balkans. This initiative presented a final phase of an ambitious wider project „Democratization and Reconciliation in the Western Balkans“ that has been implemented in 6 countries of the region.
During the project, the website will amount to some 1500 posts and include a massive internet database offering textual, documentary and visual knowledge on Serbian-Albanian relations in Serbian, Albanian and English.
The material includes:
– Some 50 books about Serbian-Albanian relations, particularly those that have an affirmative or reconciliatory character;
– hundreds of articles by some 50 authors who wrote about all aspects of Serbian-Albanian relations;
– Video database containing some 20 interviews with prominent Serbian and Albanian intellectuals, public figures and local activists from Kosovo, who offered their views on the topics regarding the possibilities of historical reconciliation, friendship and improving cooperation between Serbs and Albanians;
– A segment on Serbian-Albanian dialogue containing over 1000 units published on this issue in the media in Serbian and English from 2018 to date;
– Various archival material, like well-known documentaries, plays or movies, TV content, links to important joint projects and CSOs and the like.
The website will, therefore, offer many examples of friendship, cooperation, joint research, interviews, educative material on Serbian-Albanian relations, books, documents and texts of common interest and other related material, that we wish to popularize and make publicly available.
The project will also include promotional activities and events in Mitrovica and Belgrade.