Youth from Germany, Serbia, Ukraine, Italy, Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina gathered in Jajce and Sarajevo at the youth exchange “The World – a Place for Everyone (?) : HateSpeechFree”, held from December 15 to 23. During nine days, through trainings, workshops, lectures and study visits, the participants explored different perspectives on hate speech, learned how to recognize it, understand it, prevent it and face its consequences in their communities.

The exchange was organized by the organization Friedenskreis Halle e.V. (Halle, Germany), in cooperation with the local co-organization,Center for Education and Socializing – COD (Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina), together with partner organizations Youth Initiative for Human Rights (Belgrade, Serbia), Associazione Y.M.C.A. Parthenope Onlus (Napoli, Italy), Development Center Pangeya Ultima (Vinnytsia, Ukraine) and Asociación Juvenil Erasmiau (Puente Genil, Spain) .

As part of the program, through a series of workshops and discussions, participants learned about hate speech, discrimination, social tensions, and prejudices, sharing experiences about segregation in the education system, the challenges of the political context, protests, and issues related to dealing with the past. During the exchange, visits to Sarajevo and the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Potočari had a particularly strong impact, where participants encountered personal testimonies of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide and discussed the importance of acknowledging the facts and the suffering of the victims.

Throughout the program, participants jointly created visuals, short videos, and photographs that show how they spent the exchange and why it is important for them to stand up against hate speech. They shared all of this on social media to show how meaningful such encounters are and to encourage others to reflect on this topic.

This Erasmus+ project “The World – a Place for Everyone (?) : HateSpeechFree” is co-funded by the European Union.