IAPSS Annual Academic Conference "Stand up for Peace: Truth and Reconciliation Process", Belgrade 2009

IAPSS Annual Academic Conference 2009 "Stand up for Peace: Truth and Reconciliation Process", was held from 26th until 31th of July 2009, in the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Belgrade in Serbia. We included governmental and nongovernmental actors to analyze with us the main factors that hamper transitional justice mechanisms. Our inquiry was within the framework of the following themes: Reconciliation Process, Process of Stabilization and Association and Youth impact. Moreover, our aim was to develop awareness of this processes in the Western Balkan, but also to identify how the key factors that strengthen human rights advocacy and address the obstacles to construct sustainable civic trust model of reconciliation, that actively involve civil society participation ,can be implemented in other post-conflict societies. In that sense IAPSS will run a Reseach Comittee on Reconciliation and Conflict Resolution to organize every 3 years a conference on Truth and Reconciliation Process in a different region. The main focus of this Reseach Comittee will be on the youth involvement in reconciliation process. Finally, our objective is to contribute to the development of cooperation among youth from post conflict societies and to develop a critical debate to identify the impact of youth action in reconciliation processes. In that sense, this event supported the development of the IAPSS Regional Centre for the Western Balkan, which will engage the potential and stimulate the active cooperation of students in the region. Forty students joined the following activities: opening ceremony, presentation of students papers, lectures, three workshops groups, international evening, sightseeing by bus and by boat of Belgrade, conflict resolution-simulations and social activities.

The conference homepage can be found at [[ http://www.iapss.org/aac/belgrade2009//|Annual Academic Conference 2009]]