CRTA received OSCE Democracy Defender Award 2018

CRTA is recipient of the 2018 OSCE Democracy Defender Award. The Democracy Defender Award honours a person or group for exceptional contributions to the promotion of democracy and the defence of human rights in the spirit of the Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE principles and commitments. The Democracy Defender Award was established in 2016 to recognize the enormous contribution civil society makes to defending and promoting democracy in our region.

The award ceremony took place on March 16th at Schwedenhaus Wien. On that occasion director of CRTA Vukosava Crnjanski said:

“This award belongs to all the people who inspired and motivated us never to give up from democracy! This is why we devote Democracy Defender Award to all citizens, civil society organizations, journalists and activists in Serbia that committed their lives and careers to defending democracy.

At the same time, what we all witness today is that not even developed democracies are immune to democratic reversals. Foundations of democracy – free and fair elections, the rule of law, human rights and media freedom – are shaken worldwide.

And democracy is not about promising simple solutions. It is never a one-man show. It never comes over night, nor is it exclusively an issue of someone else. The battle for democracy is neither easy nor temporary. It never ends. Being aware of that, we decided to endure, but we could not walk this road alone, as we could have never deserved this award alone.” (Full speach is avaiable here)

The award ceremony was preceded by a panel discussion on ‘Democracy in the Digital Age’ moderated by Human Rights Watch’s EU Director Lotte Leicht that included the International Press Institute’s Executive Director Barbara Trionfi, Professor for Empirical Social Science Methods at the University of Vienna Hajo Boomgarden, and CRTA’s Program Director Raša Nedeljkov.

The 25 OSCE delegations sponsoring the award were Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada‎, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Source: US Mission to the OSCE