The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) bestowed the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Award to the Balkan regional network of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) for its work on peacebuilding and reconciliation in the Balkans. In his speech accepting the award on behalf of the organization on September 30, 2019, Ivan Duric, program director of the group’s Serbia branch, declared: “We want to create a region where it will be possible, acceptable, and natural for young people to meet, travel, and work together, create positive change in societies, and fall in love, no matter what Balkan countries they come from, as young people do throughout Europe.”

The Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize is awarded each year by PACE in conjunction with the Charta 77 Foundation and the Vaclav Havel Library. The award honors outstanding work in the development of civil society and the defense of human rights in Europe and the wider world. You can read more about this year’s award here, and review past recipients here.