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Dear friends,
Even though the situation has improved significantly, the pandemic still affected our work at the end of 2021 and during 2022. Some of our activities had to be postponed, some reduced in scope or modified, primarily so as to preclude in-person meetings, but this year a smaller number of our activities was conducted online. With the postponing and reduction of activities, with people being prevented from travelling and meeting, it seems as if further democratisation and human rights processes in our region were also reduced, postponed, or entirely prevented. As in the previous years, we did not let this discourage us, but instead strengthen our commitment to forging ahead in this necessary struggle for peacebuilding in the region.
Marking unmarked sites of suffering (ONMS) and working with war veterans took up most of our activities during this period as well.
In December 2021, we organised a commemorative gathering in memory of Novica Kostić, our long-time associate and friend, a peace activist and war veteran who died in December 2020. We visited Vlasotince, a small town in southern Serbia, where we laid flowers on his grave, held a commemorative gathering, and together with some thirty veterans and peace activists from the region, with the support of his family and with signatures from over 150 local citizens, we submitted an initiative for the street where he lived to be renamed Novica Kostić Street. This was nine months ago, and we are still hoping for a positive response from the local authorities.
In January 2022, we attended commemorations in Skelani, Municipality of Srebrenica, and in Tarčin near Hadžići, both in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In May 2022, we organised a joint visit to Stupni Do near Vareš and Trusina near Konjic, together with family members of victims from both sides. In June 2022, we attended the commemoration in Vitez, Bosnia and Herzegovina for the third time in a row, this time bringing a larger group of war veterans. Finally, in Blagaj near Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the beginning of June 2022, we organised a meeting with war veterans to discuss our results so far, the challenges and obstacles we faced, and our future actions and plans.
We also organised two actions to mark unmarked sites of suffering, our 17th action in November 2021, when we visited and marked sites in Trnovo, Hadžići and Bugojno, and our 18th action in February 2022 in the Brčko District of BiH. More details about all ONMS actions can be found on the dedicated website onms.nenasilje.org.
We managed to implement a peace education activity, our sixth “Mir-Paqe-Мир” peacebuilding training, which could not be organised last year due to the pandemic. The plan is to hold our Basic Training in Peacebuilding by the end of 2022.
We finally managed to organise the promotions of the Biber 03 Collection that we were forced to postpone due to the pandemic. The promotions now also featured the Biber 04 Collection published at the end of September 2021. From September 2021 to March 2022, Biber was promoted in 8 cities: Šibenik, Prijedor, Podgorica, Novi Sad, Bugojno, Bujanovac, Pristina and Prizren.
The Fifth Biber Contest was conducted and we expect to have the Biber 05 Short Story Collection printed in February 2023. Six stories from Biber 04 are now also available in audio format, and for more news about Biber, please go to biber.nenasilje.org.
At the end of March – beginning of April 2022, we organised a meeting as part of the project “South Asia – Western Balkans Peacebuilding Exchange”. The meeting had two parts, a study trip to Mostar and a workshop in Sarajevo. This programme is implemented in cooperation with Bread for the World.
With contributions from our associates and friends Luan Imeri (North Macedonia), Qerim Ondozi (Kosovo) and Dalmir Mišković (Croatia), members of the CNA Team wrote about the political and social contexts in the countries where we live and work.
More details on all of the above can be found in this report and on our websites nenasilje.org; onms.nenasilje.org/; biber.nenasilje.org We welcome your comments, criticism, insights and any feedback you can send us.
CNA Team