Projects of Mnemosyne Center are targeted to three main issues:

  • Urgent protection of heritage, implying inspection, condition assessment and drafting of priority lists and recommended measures of short and long-term protection;
  • protection of heritage integrated into economic activities, everyday life and protection of environment, which could provide grounds for rehabilitation of rural areas and repatriation of the exiled families;
  • establishing of a legal framework for the redefinition of public conservation service and incorporation in heritage protection system of the Serbian experts excluded from it in 1999.

The crucial principle MNEMOSYNE Center keeps to when designing its projects is the principle of feasibility: all the projects are designed upon a realistic basis. Perplexities of current situation in Kosovo and Metohija are not only taken into consideration, but, moreover, these projects are conceived as responses to them.

During past two years our attention was mostly directed to urgent protection of heritage. We managed to accomplish an international project in cooperation with the Italian partner, and that is the only international project carried out in Kosovo and Metohija since 1999. This stage also implied drafting of concrete projects to be implemented in future.

However, current situation in Kosovo and Metohija is not favourable for the work of Serbian NGOs and we must point to very serious problems we had to face:
  • Because of the restrictions of movement it is still impossible to assess condition and the damages of natural and cultural properties in a wider area;
  • Heritage protection service is not functioning: recommended regimes of protection are not being carried out, measures of protection are not put into effect, trained and supervisory personnel has been reduced or eliminated, etc.
  • With the exception of a narrow zone around a few Orthodox Christian sacral objects protected by KFOR, cultural property is still being vandalized;
  • International donations are awarded in a discriminative manner, while the funds provided by the state (Serbia and Montenegro) are insufficient. In such a suitation there is a real danger that the state of heritage, both natural and cultural, in Kosovo and Metohija, may not only remain unchanged buy may also worsen.