Dedicated to fostering a culture of peace

Through Peace Education, Creative Multimedia, Conflict Prevention, Post-Conflict Research, Human Rights and Transitional Justice

Learn more about our work

Awards

2014-15 Intercultural Innovation Award
1st Place, United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and the BMW Group. This award is given to the...
Congress of Local and Regional Authorities Toolkit
PCRC’s Ordinary Heroes Peacebuilding Program has been highlighted in the Council of Europe’s...
2022 Local Peacebuilder Award
The Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC), and its founder and president Velma Šarić, were awarded...
Global Peace Ambassadors
On the International Day of Peace 2018, Post-Conflict Research Center’s (PCRC) president Velma...
Intercultural Achievement Award
The Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs awarded PCRC the...
Diversity Advantage Challenge Award
Top-5 Finalist, Council of Europe. The Diversity Advantage Challenge was created as a means to...
Special Recognition of PCRC’s Ordinary Hero Mina Jahić
U.S. State Department & former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. PCRC's Bosnian rescuer...

Our mission

Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) is a women-led, peacebuilding organization and research center dedicated to fostering a culture of peace and preventing violent conflict in the Western Balkans by creating, implementing, and supporting evidence-based, multidisciplinary, and innovative approaches to peace education, creative multimedia, conflict prevention, post-conflict research, human rights, and transitional justice.

Our vision

We strive for a society where people no longer perceive diversity as a source of conflict but as the basis for prosperity. We are committed to establishing an environment where human rights are respected and the principles of transparency, accountability, and the rule of law are upheld to support a healthy democracy.

Our strategy

PCRC’s overall strategy encompasses six core areas of operation:

Creative Multimedia
The development and production of multimedia materials, tools and platforms aimed to inspire social activism towards positive change, educate viewers about underreported issues, advocate for the underrepresented, and foster tolerance and mutual understanding among divided citizens and youth.
Preventing Genocide, Mass Atrocities & Violent Extremism
The provision of prevention-based education and training to civil society actors across the Western Balkans and the strengthening of policies and practices for the prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities. This area of operation also includes the implementation of interventions that focus on addressing sexual violence and impunity for perpetrators.
Post-Conflict Research
The creation and implementation of methodologies for the collection, analysis and dissemination of rescue and survivor narratives and testimonials, the design and guidance of youth-driven community research, the development of methods for evaluating artistic approaches to peacebuilding, and the coordination and facilitation of international research initiatives and products.
Peace Education
The creation and implementation of educational programs and curriculum designed around cutting-edge research and best practices in the fields of intercultural dialogue and cooperation, intergroup contact, reconciliation, youth activism and empowerment, and pro-social behavior psychology.
Transitional Justice
Our work in this arena focuses on education, historical remembrance, historical analysis, and truth seeking. PCRC’s work in creating and implementing processes of remembrance and memorialization are done in cooperation with leading organizations in the field.
Consultancy
Our extensive knowledge of the social, cultural, and political landscape in Bosnia and Herzegovina and across the Western Balkans, as well as our vast network of partners make us uniquely equipped to provide on-the-ground expertise to organizations from around the world.

IMPACT

Since its establishment in 2011, PCRC has rapidly become a leading peacebuilding organization in the western Balkans.

We have produced 15 movies and 13 photo exhibitions.

Our documentaries have been seen by over 2 million viewers across the western Balkans and 370 million documentary viewers worldwide.

Our documentaries have been translated into 6 world languages and shown by 80 different broadcasters.

We directly engaged more than 8000 Bosnian and regional youth in our peace education programs and have reached approximately 500,000 Balkan citizens through our art-based exhibitions.

We established Balkan Diskurs: an independent multimedia platform that provides young citizen journalists, activists and academics in the western Balkans with space- free from censorship- to publish their opinions, analyses, and impressions of relevant issues in the region.

We have trained 177 local youth correspondents from over 30 regional cities and Balkan Diskurs now has over 100,000 readers and has published over 1,000 articles.

Our flagship peace education programming includes an annual youth PEACE Festival, the first regional peacebuilding Magazine MIR, teaching manual HOLOCAUST & PEACE and regional youth academy STATE OF PEACE.

Our peacebuilding work is highlighted as best practice in the Council of Europe's toolkit for official use in 46 countries, while our peace education lessons are integrated into school curriculums across Sarajevo Canton, reaching 400,000 pupils annually.

We have trained over 250 interns representing more than 30 countries.

Our work has been shown on 5 continents and replicated in Argentina, Ukraine, Rwanda and Colombia.

We provided capacity-building and support for CSOs across the Western Balkans and the world.

We established the WARM Foundation, organized 7 WARM festivals and designed the WARM Academy.

We established the first ever region-wide coalition for genocide and mass atrocity crimes prevention with the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect and over 30 of the region's leading civil society organizations.

Through educational and artistic programming, we organize commemorations of historic atrocities across our country, including the Srebrenica Genocide, Siege of Sarajevo, Kapija Massacre and White Armband Day.

We established over 200 partnerships with leading local, regional, and international institutions including the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, Srebrenica Memorial Center, Impunity Watch, Aegis Trust, Jewish Community in BiH, and the Institute for the Development of Pre-University Education of the Sarajevo Canton.

We collaborated with over 50 universities and academic programs including Columbia University, King's College London, Stanford University, London School of Economics and Political Science, Harvard University, Yale University, and the European Regional Master in Democracy and Human Rights.

We worked with filmmakers and photographers such as Angelina Jolie, Mirko Pincelli, Kirsten Johnson, Paul Lowe, Abigail Disney, Velija Hasanbegović, Taryn Simon, and Chris Leslie.