A past gone missing : dealing with contentious and politicised pasts based on the experience of human rights NGOs in Croatia

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the efforts carried out by human rights NGOs in Croatia to deal with the legacies of the violent events that shook the Western Balkans in the 1990s. As this research hints at, attempts to deal with the past in the country have not been successful. Instead, a common belief is that the mainstream narrative of the past is not to be touched and, additionally, the regional panorama has seriously undermined any attempt to deal with the past. This study sheds light on the major challenges that have kept the process of dealing with the past from having more impact and on the contributions made by human rights NGOs in spite of the forces playing against them. This analysis is particularly important considering the amount of years and resources that have gone into this process and because it sheds light on the limitations civil society organisations dealing with the past in similar contexts should expect and on the initiatives they should focus on.