Amidst the "worst crimes committed in Europe this century" the first major experiment in email was launched in June 1992 in Zagreb and Belgrade, almost exactly a year after Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia, triggering a brutal response from Serbia.
A research work titled Documenting the impact of the community peacebuilding practices in the post-Yugoslav region as a basis for policy framework development conducted by Marina Škrabalo, an activist of the Centre for Peace Studies, Croatia, provides some details.
A turning point was early 1992 when the Communications Aid project for the people in former Yugoslavia was launched by foreign peace groups together with the Center for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence in Ljubljana, the Anti-War Campaign of Zagreb and the Center for Anti-war Action in Belgrade, with the objective of setting up an alternative electronic mail system (bulletin board system or BBS) that could work on poor quality telephone lines and simple computers, the only available ICT resources at that time in the war-stricken post-Yugoslav region.
This network connected and provided training and technical support to more than 1700 peace, human rights and humanitarian workers and independent journalists from all the countries in war, including dozens of local and international NGOs that used this communication channel to assist in the search for the missing persons and tracing relatives stuck in war zones, plan joint peace-building projects, political campaigns and send out independent news reports and access more than 150 regional and international news conferences.
Current program areas include: It is a member of the Association for Progressive Communications, and sees itself as being "dedicated to the promotion of civil society and its values through ICT and the development of new media initiatives".
This interactive e-journal, was aimed at serving as a media outlet for a situation of otherwise scarce news on youth, peace-building, women's rights, gay and lesbian issues, environment and independent cultural initiatives.
Through its MEDIAnet project, launched in 2004 too, ZaMirNET says it aims to encourage and facilitate the establishment of locally based independent media in Croatia and the neighbouring countries—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro.