Shelter City - Support Centres

Shelter City is a nationwide initiative of Justice and Peace Netherlands to protect human rights defenders, in cooperation with a growing number of Dutch cities and local organizations.

Human rights defenders defend the rights of themselves and of others. Through their work they play an important role in the promotion of democratic values, political freedoms, and civil rights. This is a challenging and dangerous fight: they are often silenced, threatened, arrested, tortured and sometimes they disappear.

Justice and Peace established Shelter City in 2012 on the request of their network of international human rights defenders. After the first Shelter City in The Hague, Middelburg joined in 2014, followed by Nijmegen, Maastricht, Utrecht, and Amsterdam in 2015, Tilburg and Groningen in 2016 and Zwolle and Haarlem in 2017. In 2018 Deventer also joined the Shelter City network. Rotterdam followed in 2020. Tbilisi & Batumi (Georgia), Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania), Cotonou (Benin) and San José (Costa Rica) have joined the network as International Shelter City Hubs. The expectation is that other cities (in or outside the Netherlands) will join in the future as well. The growing number of applications from Human Rights Defenders under threat shows that new Shelter Cities are strongly needed.

In every Shelter City the municipality, local organizations, universities, and Justice and Peace provide the shelter and take care of the program for the human rights defender. Together with the human rights defenders they organize meetings and workshops that contribute to the raising of awareness about human rights issues among the inhabitants of the Shelter Cities.

Shelter City is affiliated with the EU Human Rights Defenders Relocation Platform

Association of BH Journalists (BH Novinari) - Stakeholders

Association of BH Journalists (BH Novinari) is a non-political and non-profit journalist association based in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Member of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), it connects journalists, freelance journalists, students and other professionals working in the journalistic sector in order to protect the independency of their activities.

It also offers practical support.

Association of BH Journalists (BH Novinari) - Support Centres

Association of BH Journalists (BH Novinari) is a non-political and non-profit journalist association based in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. It provides free legal and advocacy support to Bosnian editors, staff or freelance journalists and other media outlets.

Contact persons at its Free Media Help Line are Borka Rudić, borka.rudic@bhnovinari.ba, + 387 33 255 602 and Una Telegrafčić, una.telegrafcic@bhnovinari.ba, + 387 33 223 818

PEN International - Stakeholders

PEN International is the worlds leading association of writers, working to promote literature and defend freedom of expression around the world. Founded in 1921, today it connects an international community of writers from its Secretariat in London, spanning over 100 countries, with 149 PEN Centres worldwide. PEN's campaigns, events and programmes connect writers and readers, strengthen freedom of expression, defend linguistic rights and promote quality education at the national, regional and international level across the globe. PEN International is a non-political organisation which holds Special Consultative Status at the UN and Associate Status at UNESCO.

Press Council in Bosnia-Herzegovina - Stakeholders

The Press Coucil BiH is a self-regulatory body for print and online media, whose aim is to mediate between unsatisfied media readers, and print and online media as well as to supervise the application of the BH Press Code. Furthermore, it contributes to improve professional standards in print and online media of Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to protect public from unprofessional and manipulative journalistic reporting and media from political and economical pressures that jeopardize freedom of informing and freedom of media.

The complaints commission, which operates as an adivory body within the Association, considers monitoring results and public complaints about the writings of media in BiH. It monitors the implementation of the Press Code of BiH in all newspapers and publically reacts to breaches of ethical journalism standards foreseen by the Press Code of BiH.

Association of Journalists of Macedonia - Stakeholders

The Association of Journalists of Macedonia (AJM) is an independent, non-governmental and non- political party organization whose purpose is to be the protector and promoter of professional standards and freedom of expression.

It also offers practical support.

Specific objectives of the AJM include:
-Defend freedom of press, radio, television and other media;
-Fights against their abuse, the creation of monopolies and any form of censorship that affects the determination of truth, complete, unbiased, updated public information;
-Protects and promotes the freedom of rights and responsibilities of journalists, based on the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Macedonia, Statute and Acts of AJM, and international documents concerning the freedom of the media, and the exercise of expression and information as basic Human Rights.
-Protect the reputation and dignity of the journalists and the journalistic profession and protects and promotes freedom of critical and creative work.
-Represent its members in front of the community and actively participates in the preparation of legislation and inter-national conventions of interest to the profession and defend the journalistic interest in regards of the Code of Ethics.

The Association was founded in 1946 and is a member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). AJM publishes in Macedonian, Albanian and English.