Sonja Biserko

Sonja Biserko

Sonja Biserko ( Serbian - Cyrillic Соња Бисерко ; * 1948 in Belgrade , Yugoslavia ) is a Yugoslav-Serbian author and human rights activist.

Life

Biserko studied economics with a specialization in diplomacy at the University of Belgrade . From 1974 to 1991 she worked as a civil servant at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia : 1974 to 1979 in the Yugoslav embassy in London , 1984 to 1988 in the Yugoslav representation to the United Nations in Geneva , then as an advisor to the Foreign Ministry on European policy . As the representative of her country, she took part in numerous international conferences.

In 1991, together with Daniel Ivin , she organized a conference of Yugoslav opposition members for an all-Yugoslav solution to the country's problems. In the following years she organized projects, workshops and conferences dealing with war crimes in the Yugoslav wars . In 1997 she organized a conference in Ulcinj to initiate a dialogue between Serbs and Albanians. She continued these efforts until the beginning of the Kosovo War in March 1999. Since 2004 she has been President of the Serbian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.

Awards

On December 10th, 2009 Sonja Biserko was awarded the Human Rights Prize of the City of Weimar .

Works

• (as ed.): Yugoslavia. Collapse, war, crimes , 1993 ( ISBN 86-82297-01-9 )
• (as ed.): In the name of humanity. Collection of documents , 1996 ( ISBN 86-7208-007-6 )
• Politics of Ethnic Cleansing , in: Remembering expulsions in Europe? , ed. v. Dieter Bingen , 2003 ( ISBN 3-447-04839-5 ), p. 188-
• Srbija na Orijentu (Serbia on the way to the Orient), 2004 ( ISBN 86-7208-089-0 )
• Serbia: A Continued Source of Instability in the Balkans? , in: Conflict and renewal. Europe transformed , Festschrift for Wolfgang Petritsch , ed. v. Hannes Swoboda , 2007 ( ISBN 978-3-8329-2843-8 ), p. 289-
• Serbia's European Potential Crumbles , in: Serbia matters. Domestic reforms and European integration , ed. v. Wolfgang Petritsch, 2009 ( ISBN 978-3-8329-4584-8 ), p. 77-
• Yugoslavia's Implosion - The fatal attraction of Serbian nationalism , ed. v. International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights for Bjørn Engesland , 2012 ( ISBN 978-82-91809-01-4 )

Web links

• Biographical information and picture on the homepage of the Weimar Human Rights Prize
• Biographical information on the homepage of the University of Graz (in English)
• Yugoslavia's implosion (PDF; 2.2 MB) on the Serbian side of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights