{"id":10533,"date":"2026-06-30T15:03:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T14:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bgcentar.org.rs\/?p=10533"},"modified":"2026-07-17T15:19:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T14:19:48","slug":"belgrade-centre-for-human-rights-presents-the-human-rights-of-youth-in-serbia-2025-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bgcentar.org.rs\/en\/belgrade-centre-for-human-rights-presents-the-human-rights-of-youth-in-serbia-2025-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgrade Centre for Human Rights Presents the Human Rights of Youth in Serbia 2025 Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) presented its annual report, Human Rights of Youth in Serbia 2025<\/strong>, on 23 June at the Press Centre of the Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS) in Belgrade. The publication is the seventh annual report documenting the human rights situation of youth in Serbia.<\/p>\n

The report examines five interconnected areas that shaped the experiences of youth throughout 2025: the freedom of peaceful assembly, the excessive use of force, the right to education, freedom of association, and youth political participation. Drawing on international human rights standards and Serbia’s domestic legal framework, the report documents the patterns, developments, and systemic challenges that affected the enjoyment of youth rights during the reporting period<\/strong>. Particular attention is devoted to the response of state institutions to young people who participated in social and political processes, as well as to the impact these processes had on the exercise of their rights and freedoms.<\/p>\n

During the presentation, speakers stressed that youth in Serbia have assumed an active role<\/strong> in shaping social change and have emerged as key drivers of democratic and social transformation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The report finds that incidents during student-led and civic protests revealed a systemic pattern of excessive use of force by the police against young people throughout 2025<\/strong>. It documents numerous incidents and concludes that, despite their constitutional and legal obligation to protect participants in peaceful assemblies from attacks by third parties, the police repeatedly failed to do so. Speakers also highlighted the pardons granted<\/strong> by the President of the Republic of Serbia<\/strong> to individuals convicted of violent attacks on students, including those responsible for breaking the jaw of a female student in Novi Sad and the woman who deliberately drove her car into a female student during a protest in Belgrade.<\/p>\n

The presentation also noted that the largest protest in Serbia’s recent history, held in Belgrade on 15 March 2025, was organized by students participating in university blockades.<\/strong> According to the report, the gathering was violently disrupted by the use of a type of acoustic weapon (commonly referred to as a “sound cannon”) during a moment of silence commemorating those who lost their lives in the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad. Following the incident, a large number of citizens reported various symptoms, injuries, and health consequences, with testimonies collected by civil society organizations, while state authorities denied that any such device had been used or that an incident had occurred.<\/p>\n

The report also refers to the case of student Nikolina Sin\u0111eli\u0107,<\/strong> who accused former commander of the Unit for the Protection of Certain Persons and Facilities (JZO), Marko Kri\u010dak, of threatening her with rape in August of the previous year.<\/p>\n

Speakers further stressed that the human rights of young people were violated through numerous instances of media targeting<\/strong> and the publication of private data and personal information<\/strong>, particularly concerning female students, by tabloid media outlets and their editors-in-chief.<\/p>\n

The report’s editor, Goran Sandi\u0107, assessed that education became “a field of punishment” during 2025<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

“More than one hundred teachers lost their jobs because they supported students. Without independent professors and researchers, there can be no genuine academic freedom. After all the incidents in education over the past year, the message being sent to students\u2014and future students\u2014is clear: the teacher who supports you will lose their job, the dean who opens the university doors to you will be attacked with a knife, and the rector who defends you will become the target of criminal complaints. This directly undermines the right to education,” Sandi\u0107 said.<\/p>\n

Participants in the presentation concluded that 2025 was marked by the absence of dialogue<\/strong> and by a continuing long-term pattern of inadequate institutional responses to the protection of young people’s rights.<\/p>\n

The report Human Rights of Young People in Serbia 2025 was presented by its editor and author Goran Sandi\u0107,<\/strong><\/em> together with authors Petar Vidosavljevi\u0107 and Natalija Rosi\u0107<\/strong><\/em>. The event was moderated by Milica Mutavd\u017ei\u0107<\/strong><\/em> from the Youth Programme of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights.<\/p>\n

Opening remarks on the position of young people in the context of student protests and the increased youth activism throughout 2025 were delivered by Sonja To\u0161kovi\u0107<\/strong><\/em>, Executive Director of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, and Du\u0161an Poku\u0161evski<\/strong><\/em>, Programme Director of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights.<\/p>\n

The report Human Rights of Young People in Serbia 2025 in Serbian is available here.<\/a><\/p>\n

A recording of the presentation is available here:<\/p>\n