Croatia

Landmine clearing

Croatia declared free of landmines after 31 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

After more than three decades of meticulous and dangerous work, Croatia has officially been declared free of landmines. Stemming from the 1990s Homeland War, the clearance operations resulted in the safe removal of nearly 107,000 landmines and over 407,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance. Supported heavily by European Union funding, the 1.2 billion euro effort successfully reclaimed vast areas of agricultural land, dense forests, and national parks. This monumental achievement fulfills the country’s obligations under the Ottawa Convention, ensuring a much safer future for its citizens and providing an inspiring blueprint for post-conflict recovery worldwide.

Zagreb

Croatia approves law to criminalize femicide 

By / / Good news links

After Cyprus and Malta, Croatia is the third E.U. member state to recognize the crime of femicide, which is defined as the killing of a woman or girl, in particular by a man and on account of her gender. The legislation will also increase the prison sentence for rape from one to five years to three to eight, and victims will have the option to give testimony via videocall rather than attending in person.

Danube river band from the predikaloszek view point in Hungary with Visegrad and Nagymaros

Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovenia agree to establish world’s first five-country protected area to conserve “Europe’s Amazon”

By / / Archive of Human Genius

The five countries signed a historic declaration to establish a trans-boundary UNESCO Biosphere Reserve to protect their shared nature and wildlife along the Mura, Drava, and Danube rivers, “Europe’s Amazon.” The declaration paves the way for creating the world’s first five-country protected area and, with an overall size of about 800,000 hectares, Europe’s largest riverine protected area.