On July 17, as a part of project Integra, Centre for Peace, nonviolence and human rights has presented an comparison of the Croatian and Syrian highest mountain tops online.
The highest mountain top in Croatia is located on mountain Dinara. Dinara is one of the most interesting Croatian mountains. Its several-hundred-meter-high southwestern cliff is truly impressive and lures all those who observe it from the foot. Particularly beautiful are its rich flower grassland and woods. In winter and most of spring, the peaks of Dinara are covered with snow and on grey days, these are entirely hidden by clouds.
The name Dinara covers multiple terms. Dinara, in its narrow sense, is a mountain east of the town of Knin and north of Peručko Lake. In a broader sense, Dinara is an 84-kilometre-long massif, which encompasses mountains Dinara over Knin, Troglav and Kamešnica. It is well known that mountain Dinara provided the name for the entire mountain range from the Slovene Alps to Prokletije in Albania. Dinara´s highest mountain top is Sinjali which is 1.831 m high.
Highest mountain top in Syria is mount Hermon. It is a mountain cluster constituting the southern end of the Anti-Lebanonmountain range. Its summit straddles the border between Syria and Lebanon and, at 2,814 m above sea level, is the highest point in Syria.
The mountain forms one of the greatest geographic resources of the area. Because of its height it captures a great deal of precipitation in a very dry area of the world. Mount Hermon has seasonal winter and spring snow falls, which cover all three of its peaks for most of the year. Mount Hermon is also called the "snowy mountain," the "gray-haired mountain", and the "mountain of snow".
Sofia Development Association (SDA) hosted on July 5, 2019, a group of 27 young civic activists and media representatives from the Western Balkans who came to a study visit organised by the Bulgarian School of Politics. The Western Balkans activists aim to gain knowledge regarding the EU pre-accession processes and issues to be addressed. Among those issues SDA put in the agenda migration and third country nationals integration.
The participants met with the Mayor of Sofia Mrs Yordanka Fandakova to discuss local governance and European regions and cities perspective. Following that the Balkan activists worked with INTEGRA Project team to debate questions like should refugees have the right to choose their preferred destination within the EU, should refugees have to go back to their country once it is safe, is there a conflict between helping helping refugees and helping own citizens.
EU migration policy discussion and acceptance is an integral part of the pre-accession preparation of candidate countries and local communities need to be prepared as well.
