Tivat/Montenegro, 11-21.03.2011.
There were twenty participants from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo. The team consisted of: Ana Bitoljanu, Katarina Milićević, Nedžad Horozović, Nenad Vukosavljević.
The thirty-fifth ten-day training in peacebuilding organised by CNA was held in March 2011. Since 1997, when we started with it, summed up days of basic trainings could make up almost a whole year of the training.
Although the number itself can cause respect for the quantity of work, there is a remaining question: why have we been doing the same activity for 14 years and hasn’t it become an inert repeating of the activity that used to be successful? A lot has changed since 1997 – new wars happened, as well as ‘normalisations’ of the relations; new generations arrived who learned about wars from the tales of their parents and their immediate surrounding, or even worse, from the school books.
The truth is that we in CNA have also changed, but not completely. The content has changed, too, because we have always tried to adapt it to the current needs and to include the most relevant burning social issues and discourses in the workshops themselves.
What does the basic training in peacebuilding offer and what do we get from it?
I will start from myself. After 7 years, I was again in the team which conducted the basic training. Although exhausted, I came out of the training empowered and happy, because 20 new people had a powerful experience full of liftups and downfalls in the process of a dialogue with unlikeminded ones, questioning their own opinions, struggling with their own prejudices. The process we went through was not only empowering, but also sobering, because the task of peacebuilding is not something to be easily accomplished by exchanging superficial phrases of “good people on all sides” (and usually bad politicians and nationalists). For me personally, there is a lesson, as relevant as in 1997, that we cannot ourselves get out of the spiral of hatred, violence, prejudices, the opposing views of the past, the issues of guilt and responsibility. We need those from the other side to achieve this.
The Basic training offers the opportunity to get an insight into mutual connection and interdependency, gives the people a chance to ask questions they do not have an opportunity to ask in real life, because “they” are always those who cannot be trusted and who threaten “us”.
And yes, it is true we cannot expect a whole series of peacebuilding activities will originate from this group of people. There is definitely a will, but there are also different obstacles of practical nature, such as the ability to work in a team, the need for support in one’s own environment, etc. A large jigsaw puzzle must be fitted, in order to leave visible traces; but I have no doubt regarding the lasting change of people’s awareness, which happened during the training. Conceptually, we focussed on the understanding of social conflicts and their connection to personal attitudes and actions and worked on them very thoroughly and step by step. Our intention was not to give ideas for joint actions or to stimulate them to organise concrete actions immediately. It is true that our capacities for follow-up and support, after the training are very limited. Participants are more or less left to themselves, to the mutual support and within space for change in institutions/organisations they came from, which are: the Ministry for Education – history section, non-governmental organisations in ethnically divided towns, electronic media, teachers (i.e. religion), political parties’ activists, student activists…
There is also the possibility to build on this, through other existing educational programmes.
I am not ready to claim we must hold additional 350 basic trainings, but today, 14 years later, I am still ready to defend this concept of a cross border meeting and intensive learning, as it is to this day, because I believe the need for it is still unabated.
I could recall moments that moved individuals, in which anger, sorrow or compassion were shown. I will ask some people that participated to write it instead of me.
N.V.
Excerpts of participants reviews
D. I. from Zagreb (Croatia):
“…the meeting that was important for me, was to be working with a Croat from Bosnia, when I reacted very emotionally, becoming aware of his prejudices against me as a Croat from Croatia and my prejudices against him. As for him I was a member of the group that discriminated against him more than once in Zagreb, for me, he, as a man from a patriarchal environment in my opinion, belonged to a dominant group that discriminated against me. Apart from that, some of his statements reminded me of the statements I argued about with my father. Later, I heard from him he wanted a better relationship and conversation with his father and that was something that mirrored my wishes.
Apart from that, in the sense of relationships and rapprochement, I have been thinking about how people, no matter how different they seem, how different opinions they have and how different things they say, mirror exactly those things I myself have and they like or dislike each other, depending on the phase and situation they are in.”
F. K. from Struga (Macedonia)
“The application of the acquired experience depends on us, individuals, to work on raising awareness of people that it is possible to look at things differently, avoiding the usual divisions on “them” and “us”. It is possible to accept the facts objectively, without fake patriotism behind which the personal interests are hidden, without disdain and discrimination based on ethnicity or difference.
Devotion and dedication of the team members gave me the support and motivation that I myself can contribute to positive changes (through the work with children and youth on education for tolerance, development of communication skills and nonviolent conflict resolution) in my environment and that commitment to the goal of human equality and their rights, regardless of their identity, is not in vain.“
M. D. from Novi Sad (Serbia)
“On numerous occasions, I have listened and read about how in the early Christian church (and I am sure this also happened in other communities) a whole community confessed, that is, an individual confessed in front of the all others… I don’t know if it was because of the circle, participants, trainers, relaxed atmosphere, themes, mutual trust, but it seems to me neither I nor the other participants would hesitate to expose the finest and the most intimate parts of our lives. I do not idealise the circumstances that contributed to forming this opinion of mine. I believe the majority of the people in the region, if not all of them, would form a “circle” and not military formations if only they had a chance and, above all, a will to meet, speak and be listened to. What should be repeated as a mantra is that the others are not a threat, but a condition and necessity for peace in oneself and around oneself. CNA training demonstrates this in a fantastic way.
…I believe all of us will apply what we “learnt” more or less, consciously or unconsciously, in line with our abilities and circumstances. The training gave all of us a good basis, stimulus, directions, extension and reminder of the knowledge previously acquired and all that should follow is a matter of each participant’s will, her abilities and opportunities… It is hard to leave the training without the feeling of being “awake” and “conscious”, but it is even harder to remain in that state. I hope I will more often be in this state and contribute to the “social insomnia” at least a bit.”
J. P. from Skopje (Macedonia)
“Maybe the most important insight from this training is that I should constantly and steadily question things and try to look at them from different angles.”
K. L. from Kičevo (Macedonia)
“When I received the confirmation from CNA that I am invited to the training, and when I saw the list of the participants, I asked myself whether we would start the war again or not, I had bad thoughts and I started my journey to the training with 80 % of negative and only 20 percent of positive feelings…
All the themes were great, but the strongest impression for me carried the theme in the “barometer” activity, when we positioned the statements and later discussed them, and it was the theme “Macedonia is the state of all Macedonians”. I listened to the people stating their opinions and all of them marked this statement as ‘violent’. When the conversation started, I expected different opinions, but this was not the case, everybody had the same opinion as I did – Macedonia should be the state of all peoples that live in it. I was surprised and delighted that everybody thought this statement was violent and that Macedonia should be a democratic state of all the nationalities living in it.
I had always thought the people from the other Balkan countries were different from us and thought we were a bad people, but in this seminar I realised and learnt it was not correct, that people thought in a positive way, just like any nation fighting for justice in the place they live in and this strongly impressed me during the seminar. From now on, I will always be the one contributing to the understanding that Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Macedonians are great people, smart, intelligent, and democratic. I think in the workshops such as these a lot of people have the opportunity to change their attitudes and this seminar helped me a lot to learn something and use it in every day life.”
J. J. from Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
“Bringing closer to me the personal experiences of the others in a very subtle way, my perception of my own victim role has changed me and took me away from self-pity and the feeling of helplessness in the situations I constantly found myself in.
The most important for me is the awareness, that it is not illogical or ‘wacky’ to constantly requestion oneself. Making people around requestion themselves is a very important experience for me after this training and I can’t wait to constantly use the acquired skills.”