HCNM 25th Anniversary Celebration and 2018 Max van der Stoel Award Ceremony
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On 9 November 2018, in The Hague, the Netherlands, the high school students from the Municipality of Jajce in Bosnia and Herzegovina were awarded the 2018 Max van der Stoel Award in recognition of their outstanding courage and inspirational activism, which led to the prevention of further segregation in schools in Jajce as well as throughout the country.
The students successfully resisted the local authorities’ decision to establish a new ethnically segregated school in the municipality in 2016. Learn more about their story here.
The award, co-sponsored by the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) and the Dutch Foreign Ministry, recognizes extraordinary and outstanding achievements in improving the position of national minorities across the OSCE countries.
The official justification letter of the jury is available here in Bosnian, Croatian, English and Serbian.
Meet the members of the jury here.
For more information about the Max van der Stoel Award read this factsheet.
In parallel to the award ceremony, the event in The Hague also celebrated the 25th anniversary of the appointment of the first OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities. An anniversary photo exhibition was launched by the current High Commissioner, Lamberto Zannier, which illustrates the legacy of the five successive High Commissioners, the HCNM’s work in the field, its partnership with international organizations, its early warning function, and its thematic recommendations and guidelines “in action”.
The HCNM 25th anniversary photo exhibition is open to the public from 12 November to 1 December at the Atrium, The Hague City Hall, Spui 70, 2511 BT The Hague. Entrance is free-of-charge.
Read this press release about the event.
Follow the discussion on Twitter using the hashtags #mvdsAWARD and #voice4diversity.