Humanitarian Law Center and its founder Nataša Kandić nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

1st February 2018: Two United States Congressmen – US Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker and Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Rep. Eliot Engel – today nominated SRT grantee the Humanitarian Law Center and its founder Nataša Kandić for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.

Ms Kandić founded the Humanitarian Law Center (Fond za humanitarno pravo) in Belgrade in 1992 to document human rights violations committed during the conflicts associated with the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. More than 25 years later, the Humanitarian Law Center still advocates for justice for victims of war crimes and works to counter the extreme nationalism and strained ethnic tensions that remain in the Western Balkans.

More recently Kandić has campaigned for the establishment of a regional truth and reconcilition commission (RECOM) to investigate historic human rights abuses comitted during the Balkan conflicts and memorialise the victims.

The two Congressmen stated in their nomination letter that the ‘thorough documentation of these crimes by the HLC became essential for the provision of justice, both at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and in the war crimes chambers in regional countries’. The letter also notes that the HLC has continued working in a hostile environment in Serbia, but that it is ‘safe to assume’ that its efforts ‘deterred additional human rights violations’.

The Humanitarian Law Center said, ‘We are honoured by the nomination, which encourages us to continue our efforts’.

The full text of the nomination letter is available here.