On Friday, 3rd June 2022, Prof. Dr Alija Kožljak, the UNIGEM project coordinator for the International Burch University (IBU), was a guest on Radio Sarajevo and he spoke about the mentioned project, its goals, already achieved results and upcoming activities.
UNIGEM is a project aimed at strengthening the capacity of state and private universities in BiH, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia to combat gender-based violence and sexual harassment. The project involves eighteen universities. They all signed the Memorandum of Cooperation and, in that way, confirmed their strategic commitment to ensuring gender equality and a safe environment for teachers and students by introducing a gender perspective.
In the course of the previous year, and respective project activities, the following was done: a comprehensive survey of the gender equality state at university level in BiH and the region was conducted, special bodies for combating gender-based discrimination were established at all partner universities, and the University Gender Resource Center (UNIGeRC) was established at the University of Sarajevo with the aim to coordinate all necessary activities in regard to gender equality at partner universities. Also, institutional Gender Action Plans (GAPs) were adopted at all partner institutions, and in May 2022, a conference was held at the Rectorate of the University of Sarajevo, under the title of Beyond Fear and Silence: Universities against Violence.
More about the upcoming activities, as are: the introduction of new syllabi in university curricula, the translation of the necessary literature from English, etc. can be found in the interview given by Prof. Dr Kožljak, which is available here.
