Peace Education and Nonviolence affirmation program is aimed at empowering individuals and groups towards local community (and wider) peace-building through encouraging dialogue and promoting non-violence with a basic principle of social change through education. Long-term, strategic program goals include:  advocating for democratization of the educational system and quality education policies; raising civic competence; empowering citizens for activism and preventing violence through raising awareness on nonviolence and afirming nonviolent practices and experiences. 

The Centre for Peace studies, promotes, and develops public policies linked to the concept of human security. Human security arises from the needs of every individual and is tied to the recognition of the needs of all people living in a single country. We maintain that the development of policies from the viewpoint of national security has so far brought on human rights violations and promotion of violence, as the ‘interests of the state’ are held in higher regard than human lives. Within this program, our focus is on public policies concerning the workings of police forces, intelligence agencies, and the army. We aim to oversee those institutions concerning human rights violations and the transparency of their work. Through our monitoring and advocacy, we aim to transform those institutions to become transparent and provide a service to the citizens without violating human rights or promoting violence. In a wider context, we believe in a utopian vision in which our work on social changes will lead to a society where such institutions will not be needed, or at least where non-violence will be a major value.

Many domestic and foreign reports (such as that published by CPS in 2013) demonstrate that ethnic, racial and religious discrimination remain a major issue in Croatia. Through the activities and projects which are part of this program we are aiming to present the dangers of prejudices towards religious, ethnic and racial minorities and to remove them.  This will be done through education at all levels of the education system, cooperation with state and academic institutions, and cooperation with the media which should show due care and responsibility toward this subject and should be aware of the role they have in creating public opinion which can sometimes negatively impact the human rights of vulnerable groups.

Peace Studies is an interdisciplinary area of education relying on a number of social sciences and humanities, as well as the experience of lecturers and participants.  It seeks to understand the cause of conflict, develop approaches to prevent and stop violence, war and serious human rights violations and build sustainable peace – fair systems and societies strong enough to resist violence, inequality and injustice.