Introduction
Ivana Franovic, Milan Colic and Nedžad Horozovic from the Centre for Nonviolent Action
made an exploratory trip to Yugoslavia in October and December of 2001.
This research had the following goals:
– Getting to know NGOs and their local conditions
– Analysis of the political situation in the country and problems of society
– Assesment of needs of the groups working on peace building, conflict resolution, interethnic relations and cross border cooperation
– Assesment of needs for education in nonviolent conflict transformation.
During the research, we visited 46 organisations from all over Serbia and Montenegro, from:
Niš, Medveda, Leskovac, Vlasotince, Vranje, Bujanovac, Preševo, Cacak, Užice, Novi Pazar,
Kraljevo, Kragujevac, Dimitrovgrad, Pirot, Knjaževac, Zajecar, Negotin, Bor, Beograd, Novi Sad,
Sombor, Becej, Kolašin, Podgorica, Nikšic, Cetinje, Kotor, Herceg Novi, Tivat, Ulcinj, Bijelo
Polje.
Having in mind the size of Yugoslavia, and the number of organizations active in it, our
priority was to spend as much time as possible in the province, in small towns and cities, to
explore the situation and contact organizations that are active there, rather than in Belgrade.
Research did not include Kosovo, for security reasons
Political situation
The political situation in FR Yugoslavia is rather complex. The complexity begins with
perception of the term “Yugoslavia”, which can be quite different. Some people consider
Yugoslavia as: Montenegro and Serbia (together with the regions Vojvodina and Kosovo).
For others Yugoslavia means: Montenegro, Serbia proper and Vojvodina. For some people
Yugoslavia means only Serbia (questions remains whether “Serbia” is just Serbia proper,
or includes the region of Vojvodina). All this means that the use of the term
“Yugoslavia”, for some people from this region, may sound like a political statement by
itself, regardless of the fact that it is the official name of the country. The situation is
similar with the term “Serbia”.
Today, part of the population of the Republic of Montenegro wants an indipendent
state. Part of the population of Vojvodina wants more authonomy for Vojvodina, and the
majority of the population of Kosovo wants this region to become an independent state.
Parliamentary elections held in Montenegro in April of 2001 were mostly perceived
as a referendum for the independence of Montenegro. The two biggest political
coalitions confirm that with their names: “Collition Together for Yugoslavia” and “The
Victory of Montenegro – Democratic Coallition of Milo Ðukanovic”. This unofficial
referendum, however, did not untangle the complicated situation in Montenegro,
because no one won more than 50% of the vote (official results were: 40,9% to 42% in
favour of Milo Ðukanovic’s coallition). The rest of the votes went to the pro –
independence Liberal Alliance (7,9%) and to some small parties like those of Albanian
and Bosniak ethnic minorities.
During 2000, while Slobodan Miloševic was still in power in Serbia, Montenegrin daily
papers were full of feuilletons about “centuries of torture of Montenegro under Serbia”.
This atmosphere was very reminiscent of what was happening in Bosnia and Herzegovina
or Croatia just before the war. Heavy police forces were present on the roads of
Montenegro, with police wearing combat uniforms and khalashnikovs. There was fear of
possible war between Serbia and Montenegro. The fear is gone now, especially after the
so called “changes” in Serbia (the fall of the former regime).
What remains is the question of independence as an urgent problem in Montenegro.
The first reactions in Serbia were: “Let them go if they want”, “To hell with them”,”No
one asks us whether we want to live with them, only they are asked whether they want
to live with us”. During 2000, however, people became slightly tired and disinterested in
the subject. For a long time, both authorities and most of the media acted as if a
consensus had been reached on the issue of independance in Montenegro. All the
attention was drawn to Serbia, like it was only up to Serbia whether Montenegro would
become an independant state or not. Not enough opportunity was given to the citizens
of Montenegro for diallogue and public debate. The situation is however very
complicated, and people are extremly divided. In some cases it affects families: familiy
members don’t speak to each other because of their different political position. In some
towns, those who support one or the other side go to separate pubs and do not mix.
Riding in a car with Belgrade registration plates and asking people for directions gives
you an idea about whose side most of the people are that you talk to. Political parties or
the media in Montenegro do not make it any easier, and instead increase polarization.
The media has clearly made its choice. It seems there is no independent media to offer
constructive criticism of both political options, and to give an effective approach to the
problem.
According to the latest research from the Center for Democracy and Human Rights
from Podgorica and Damar Agency (January 2002) the referendum results for
independence of Montenegro would be: 46,7% to 41,9% in favour of independence. When
asked about the best way for Serbia and Montenegro to establish their mutual relations,
people gave the following answers: an independent and internationally recognized state
(37,2% ); a federation based on the new constitution (32,7%); a union of independent
states (11,2%).
This conflict will certanly not be overcome without contructive dialogue and the
public debate of suppo rters of different political options in Montenegro.
As well as Montenegrins and Serbs, there are members of other ethnicities in
Montenegro: Albanians (mostly in the southern part), Croatians (in central and northern
part of the Adriatic coast), Bosniaks (in the east – the Montenegrin part of Sandžak),
Roma and others. There are evident inter-ethnic tensions, but the matter of
independance has pushed all the other problems in the background. These problems are
either not discussed or denied. The precise ethnic structure of Montenegro is unknown,
because the last census was done in 1991. The next census is expected in April of 2002.
According to the figures obtanied in this research, Albanians make 7.6% of the total
population, while there are 83% Albanians in the town of Ulcinj, at the very south of the
Adriatic coast. Quite a large number of Albanians got their qualifications in Albania and
Kosovo, because that way they had a chance to study in their native language. However,
the authorites do not acknowledge degrees from Kosovo and Albania and that is one of
the most common problems Albanians encounter in everyday life. It is interesting to
notice that during the holliday season, the largest number of tourists visiting Ulcinj
come from Kosovo (Albanians), while visitors from other parts of Yugoslavia are very
rare. Undoubtedlly, there are strong predjudices towards parts of the country inhabited
mostly with Albanians.
Sandžak is a region in Yugoslavia, with a mostly Muslim (Bosniak) population, divided
into two parts by the border between Montenegro and Serbia. Bosniaks in Montenegro do
not have one political party to represent their interests. Their political leaders are
members of the ruling coallition and support the independence of Montenegro. In Serbia,
there are Bosniak political parties, and most of them are against the indepedance of
Montenegro, because that would break the region of Sandžak into two, and break many
family, firend and bussines ties of these people.
According to the 1991 census, almost one third of the population of Serbia including
Vojvodina and Kosovo, are not Serb nationality. Ethnic structure has certainly changed a
lot due to intensive migrations of population over the last decade. However, Albanians,
Bosniaks/Muslims, Croats, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Slovaks, Rusins, Roma, Vlahs, Macedonians, Slovins, Germans, Gorans and others still make significant percent of
population.
Vojvodina is the most multi-cultural part of Serbia, where the biggest minority is
Hungarian. Nacionalists still “remember” and blame Hungarians for being Nazi’s allies in
The Second World War. The support of a large part of the population and political
leaders of Vojvodina for more autonomy of this region is perceived as a call for
separation and unification with Hungary. These kind of populistic comments comming
from certain politicians are not harmless, because they fall onto the fertile ground of
still existing smoldering nationalism.
Bulgarians are the largest minority in the south -east of Serbia (in Pirot county, they
make up about 30% of the population). While the Hungarian minority have primary and
secondary schools in their native language in Vojvodina, there are not any schools in
Bulgarian language. Aspirations of some Bulgarian political parties to have primary and
secondary schools in Bulgarian language are perceived as attempts towards unification
with Bulgaria (just as with Hungarians). Nationalistic predjudices are very strong in that
part of the country. Even the term »Bulgarian« sounds defamatory.
Over the last few years more young people of Bulgarian and Hungarian nationality
choose to study in Bulgaria and Hungary, because they have a chance to learn in their
native language, but also with the hope that they will be able to find a job and a better
life in those countries.
Albanians are the largest minority in the southern part of Serbia. The situation is
calm there after armed clashes between members of OVPBM (Liberating Army of
Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveda) on one side and the Yugoslav Army and police on the
other side. There are, however occassional incidents. Intensive police and army
presence is quite evident. For instance in the centre of Medveda, on the town square,
there is a big army baracks. After the armed conflict, the majority of the Albanian
population moved from Medveda, mostly to Kosovo. According to Serbs it was
“voluntary”, while Albanians said “they were forced to leave”. Fear itself is a good
enough reason to leave. Authorities in Serbia made some steps to calm down the
situation, but most of it was rather clumsy. The establishment of a multi-ethnic police
force sounds like a constructive step, but those Albanians who decide to join the force
face the following problem: most of them got their training in Kosovo or in Albania, and
their degrees are not accepted in Serbia. There are very few Albanians in the local
administration of the town of Bujanovac. A local Serb commented: “The biggest problem
is the fact that Serbs are now supposed to share something they consider to be their
own, and they are not used to sharing it, but to be the bosses.” But also: “There isn’t
any conflict between the Serbs and the Albanians here, it’s the conflict between the
Albanians and the state.”
Bujanovac is divided: different radio stations for Albanians and Serbs, separate pubs,
separate schools, different languages.
Media in Serbia still often use the term “Šiptar”, which is pejorative name for an
Albanian.
Ehtnic groups have difficulty in preserving their cultural traditions in the educational
process. Even if there are textbooks in their native language, they are simply translated
from Serbian language and they bring a one-sided perception of history. Furthermore,
there is either very little or no information whatsoever about the culture of those ethnic
groups. It’s absurd that history textbooks for pupils in primary school, translated into
Albanian language, have a photograph of an ortodox church, on the cover. There are no
books with the photo of a mosque on the cover page.
Additionally, there are a minor number of literary works written in the languages of
the minorities of Yugoslavia, translated into Serbian language.
Education certanly does not offer a multicultural picture of the society we live in.
In April 2001, SMMRI (Strategic Marketing & Media Research Institute) completed
research titled “Perception of truth in Serba”. The results were amazing: 39.9% of the
population of Serbia think they should never again trust to those nations they once made
war with . About 21% of those aged 18 to 29, and 34.6 % of people over 60 say they are
totally unprepared for reconcilliation with nations with which we were at war. The Army
is considered to be the most important factor of the country’s security and an institution
of utmost trust. The most important factor for the dissintegration of Yugoslavia is
Croatian nationalism (77.7%) and the interests of USA (73,5%). Serbs in Bosnia and
Herzegovina were more tolerant than the other nations there, which is why they
suffered (41.9%). This is how some relevant factors from the Serb side are estimated:
Ratko Mladic and the Army of Republika Srpska – excellent (46.3%); Radovan Karadžic
and the Serbian leadership from Pale – excellent (34.9%). According to 52.5% of the
respondants, Serbs comitted 0 war crimes in the past ten years.
The federal Ministry of Ethnic and National Communities started a campaign with the
slogan “Tolerance!” After so many years of hate speech in the media. This is certanly
refreshing and a step that deserves welcome and support.
The economy of Serbia and Montenegro is in vary bad state. As an example,
according to the figures of the Federal Statistics Institute, the average salary in
Yugoslavia in November of 2001, was 6.944 dinar (about 115 EUR). At the same time the
basket of goods for the family of four was 1.2067,58 dinar (about 201 EUR). Many people
are losing their jobs because big factories are closing down since they are no longer
profitable and budget funds are spent on them. This can cause social turmoil of great
proportion, but people have got used to various difficulties such as international
sanctions, war, bombing, and inflation; and don’t seem to react in a way one might
expect.
At this moment several hundred thousand refugees and displaced persons from
Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo live in Yugoslavia. Figures about them vary
a lot (according to the Red Cross, there are about 350.000 refugees and 185.000
displaced persons in Serbia). Most of them live in collective centres and very often their
living conditions are inhuman. They are mostly situated in central Serbia and Vojvodina, and they often make 14-37% of the total population of the municipality they live in,
including the poorest municipalities in Serbia like Kraljevo, Kragujevac, and some towns
in the south of Serbia.
These people usually are not accepted by the local population. They are often
accused of being the cause of the difficult economic situation they find themselves in.
Therefore, its not uncommon for refugees to live their lives as in a ghetto.
In our contacts with NGO representatives, most of them expressed their
dissapoinment with “changes” in Serbia. People complain it is taking too long for results,
that they are almost invisible, that there is hardly any change in the system, that the
new authorities do not know or are unable to perform true changes. However almost all
the people we’ve talked to emphasized that there was a sense of freedom, no more fear
of the police, arrests, no more of underground work. No matter how much
dissapointment, there is a general understanding of the problems the new goverment
has, and therefore there’s patience and hope that some essential changes will come in
time. There’s slightly less understanding for local authorities in some towns, where the
very same people (who were once part of the previous regime) stay in power, but now
belong to the different political party, or those new people who adopt old manners
(corruption, nepotism, arrogance, etc).
This is what activists identified as problems within society, and in their local
environment:
– Economic problems, strikes, low salaries, fear of losing job
– Quarrels within the ruling coalition
– Corruption (“When you want something done you have to take at least 200g of
coffee to the clerk at the township, not the mention doctors”)
– Apathy, melancholy, having no power or energy, especially apathy amongst young people
– Young people do not have a space to express themselves
– Unemployment
– Silent migrations of young people from villages and small towns
– Criminal
– Racism
– Nationalism
– Xenophobia
– Not accepting differences
– Disrespect of civil rights of minorities
– Hate speech in media
– Violence in families
– A minor number of women and young people in local government structures
– Population which is not informed – fertile soil for manipulations
– A minor number of independent media with well educated journalists who check
information before broadcasting them
Non Government Organizations and Authorities
Non goverment organizations blame the “new” authorities in Serbia for the absence of
law on nongoverment organizations, so they continue to function according to the old
legal regulations. This means that when it comes to finances and taxes, NGO’s are
treated like profit organizations. NGO’s are forced to engage in “creative bookkeeping” in
order to survive. NGO’s had an important role in overthrowing the old regime and gave
direct support to the present goverment, which is why their dissapointment is even
bigger. One of the activists says: “We protested for them. We did everything as
volunteeres, never asked for any help. We haven’t done that for their sake, but for our
own. I don’t need a medal or a tap on my shoulder. All I want is to know is what my
rights are, and not someone to do favours for me. At the moment it’s in our favour, so
there are no financial police here. The question remains whether they will be in favour
of us when we start to criticize them.”
NGO law in Montenegro is not much different when it comes to the financial aspect
of their dealings (for example, if the organization has any money left on their account at
the end of the year it’s considered as profit and they must pay tax for it).
Both the goverment and local authorities in Montenegro provide some money in their
budgets to support activities of NGOs. However, information on the amounts of money
planned in the budget or organisations which were granted the money is unavailable. It
seems that this kind of information is not for public consumption.
Many of those political parties in power, in both Serbia and Montenegro, have their
own nongoverment organizations.
In some municipalities (like Niš and Pirot), there is an “empty seat” in the town hall
for the representatives of NGOs, who cannot vote, but have a chance to take part in
discussion.
Representatives of local authorities rarely or never respond to invitations for
seminars organised by NGOs. Several people we talked to say that they were under the
impression that loca l government had considered them as some sort of competition. It’s
because they were working on programmes local authorities should have been doing but
never did. Also, it was difficult to get any information from the authorities. One of the
people we spoke to said: I think local authorities see us as competition, because we had
a chance to get more education than they had. We know more about some of the things
they are supposed to know about. It is absurd that when we want to share what we know
with them, they simply don’t show up at the seminar.”
There are very few organisations that achieved any kind of cooperation with local
structures. There are also very few of those who got any kind of support from them,
even though they work on programmes of common benefit. This is not the case when
NGOs distribute humanitarian aid, because than they usually have the support of local
government.
Cases of cooperation between NGOS and the republic or federal government are also
rare. A woman we talked to said: “It is easier to get in touch with some foreign
ambassador than with an official from the ministry.”
The Difficulties NGOs Encounter
Most of the NGOs we visited experience one major difficulty – people are leaving
them. There are several reasons for it:
– Educated activists go to work for bigger international organisations (they are mostly
administrators and rarely in a position to make decisions, but they get better paid
and their salaries are regular)
– Educated activists have become representatives of local and other authorities
– After the regime was overthrown the motivation of activists dropped.
Most of the people working in NGOs haven’t got any social or health insurance.
The lack of adequate law on NGOs forces them to ask for funding from foreign
donors, since local companies have no interest in financing NGOs because it’s not tax
deductible.
Most of the NGOs in Serbia and Montenegro are “project oriented”, meaning they
don’t have a clearly defined mission and strategy, but prepare their project proposals
based on open competition donors announce. Thereby, donors directly define strategy of
work and development and priorities of civil society. Thus, authentic initiative of the
local people is lost, and they are the ones who know local conditions better than donors.
Programmes become oriented towards the donor, and not to the target group. This is
one of the reasons why many NGOs were created to obtain jobs to some people. A man
we talked to said: “Working on the programme, which is not a priority, makes you feel
apathetic, but unless you accept what is offered there are not any funds. Donors finance
humanitarian aid, which is why we do it, we need something to survive.”
An additional difficulty lies in the fact that NGOs hardly manage to find donors eager
to grant resources for structural financing (for office expenses like: rent, phone bills,
power and heating bills, salaries), while the activities are easier to get funds for. In
order for organisations to realize quality programmes, they need certain experience and
well-co-ordinated structure to perform that in a professional manner. However, this
structure is often missing, because there are not enough finances to support it.
Several organisations, especially Roma, said that it is very difficult for them to write
project proposals in English. The majority of the population can’t speak English and this
goes for many of the activists, too. Some of the organisations have stated this as an
example of discrimination: “If we can’t speak English, we’re automatically deprived of
many competitions and funds.”
Very few NGOs said they had a problem with local extreme groups.
Women’s groups working on: prevention of violence against women and raising
community’s awareness of its presence in families (against women and children) and
awareness of the unequal position of women in the community, very often are not
accepted by local communities, especially in small towns.
For NGOs from small communities it is difficult to get access to information (about
education, open competitions for fundng, similar groups from other towns, literature
about their field of work). Organisations from Belgrade rarely have these kind of
difficulties, because Belgrade is at the same time an information centre.
Peace Building, Regional Cooperation, Multi-ethnic Dialogue
Present Initiatives
CNA regards contacts and acquaintances with groups working on peace building, inter
ethnic dialogue and those groups whose priority is regional (cross border) cooperation
especially important. It is amongst them, that we see our potential colleagues and allies
in many activities to promote shared values.
There are over 3.000 registered NGOs in Serbia and Montenegro.
According to the latest figures from the Centre for Development of the Non -profit
Sector, who has a data base of NGOs from Serbia and Montenegro, there are only 51
organisations that declare themselves as peace organisations and propagate a culture of
peace and nonviolence. A large majority of them are either not active at all or their
activities often have nothing whatsoever to do with peace building.
Most of the NGOs we visited, whose mission is to propagate a culture of peace, have
dedicated most of their capacities to distribution of humanitarian aid. Although that
work is certainly very useful and necessary for hundreds of thousands of people in
Yugoslavia, it isn’t a peace work in the true sense.
Nevertheless, some organisations don’t perceive their own work as peace work, but
in fact they are making steps towards sustainable peace.
Very few organisations work on conflict transformation and offer education in
nonviolent conflict transformation (like Most, Hrast, Hajde da…). Most of the
organisations we met never had a chance to get any similar type of education, and they
found it necessary for their work.
Some of the organisations even want to include peace building and nonviolent
conflict transformation in their long–term strategy, so they expressed an explicit need
for education of their members. We haven’t got any information on whether any
organisation does training for trainers in this area of work, or not.
With respect to the parts of the country with an ethnically mixed population (south
and south -east of Serbia, Vojvodina), there are few ethnically mixed organisations
working on inter-ethnic dialogue. Organisations of ethnic minorities are mostly focused
on preserving their culture and tradition, and perhaps on protection of human rights of
the ethnic group they belong to.
A small number of organisations are involved in the direct monito ring of human rights
and presenting cases of human rights abuse to the public. The work of those
organisations is invaluable to the social groups whose rights are being broken. This way
they get direct support, but it is also very important to sensitise so ciety towards the
discrimination that is strongly present. We should certainly point out the Fond za
humanitarno pravo (Humanitarian Law Centre) and Jukom (Yugoslav Committee of
Lawyers for Human Rights), but also local organisations such as Odbor za ljudska prava
(Council for Human Rights) Bujanovac, Odbor za ljudska prava (Council for Human
Rights) Negotin and others.
It is important to mention organisations whose programme is dealing with the past,
like Odbor za gradansku inicijativu (Council for Civic initiatives) Niš, Gradanski
parlament Srbije (Civic Parliament of Serbia) from Cacak, Medija centar Beograd, and
others.
Regional (cross border) co-operation is also badly covered. Most of the rare
organisations involved in cooperation with organisations from neighbouring countries or
programmes regarding these countries were focused on Romania, Bulgaria and/or
Hungary. Only several of them focused their work on one or several countries of former
Yugoslavia, and set this as one of their priorities. A couple of organisations expressed
their wish for cooperation with organisations from ex-Yugoslav countries and a need to
establish contacts.
Needs and Lessons learned
Most of this research was done while CNA was preparing one of our basic training events in
nonviolent conflict transformation. We received about 160 applications for this training, 100 of
which came from Serbia. We were a little bit concerned about such a large interest, since we
were able to accept only 20 applications per training.
With respect to the number of various problems in society, there is certainly a big
need for education in nonviolent conflict resolution. There is also an interest for it.
Present capacities in Yugoslavia are insufficient to meet all demands, and therefore
education of multipliers deserves special attention.
Some of the NGOs we’d met expressed an explicit need for cross border work,
especially within former Yugoslavia. We find this approach necessary for dissolving
prejudice and mistrust that exists, for establishing communication and opening up dialogue. An important dimension of cross-border meetings and cooperation is sensitising
to violence within society, which is a result of a whole range of different experiences
and perceptions. This means there is a need for more than just “recreative” gatherings
of people from different nationalities, “from different sides”, but also for a meticulous
and constructive approach to opening up those issues where conflict exist.
We estimate that it is very important to work on education about different cultures
with and by whom we live. Publishers need encouragement to translate into Serbian
lan guage and publish the works of those authors who belong to either minorities or
neighbouring nations.
NGO activities don’t get enough media coverage. On one hand, the media are badly
informed or not interested in NGO activities. On the other hand, NGOs don’t give
information and are not presenting their work well to the public. That’s why it is
important to educate people from the media and NGOs about each other, in order to
broaden and empower the circle of individuals and organisations that understand and
support peace building and establishing of civil society.
We also think it is a good idea to support cooperation between NGOs. One can often
notice an atmosphere of rivalry between NGOs, which prevents fruitful cooperation and
exchange of information and experiences, and above all mutual support. The solution of
this problem is not in forming massive NGO-networks with many members, because they
are doomed since they really are only formal. We estimate it is necessary to work on
education on civil society based on cooperation, information exchange and mutual
support.
A great number of the organisations we met expressed their need for education in
teamwork, which is a basis for cooperation.
Besides cooperation between NGOs, there is a need to support cooperation between
representatives of the media, authorities, NGOs and other representatives of civil
society. A successful strategy towards this would be to get to know each other and work
on building mutual relations between them.
It is important to exert influence on the Ministry of Education and other authorities
to carry out reforms of the educational system quickly and more thoroughly, and also to
pay special attention to the changes of school programmes. Up to now, school curricula
are not sensitive on issues like minorities, gender, human and children rights, or
violence within society. We would be very glad to see the transformation of those ideals,
now presented in school books as “to give one’s life for the fatherland” into values of a
society which is finally determined to promote the culture of peace and non -violence.
To those organisations and individuals coming from outside this region, we
recommend listening to local needs and circumstances, if they want to offer support to
local initiatives building civil society and sustainable peace. This way they can avoid an outcome in which programmes are oriented towards foreign organisations, instead of
towards the target group and needs of local population.
No one can build a sustainable peace for the people of this region and make them
deal with the past. This is a job they need to do themselves, with the support of all
people of good will.
We must underline that this society does not need to concentrate only on
extinguishing fires that are already burning, but to set priority to prevent them from
breaking out in the first place .
The Role of CNA in Peace Building
The Centre for Nonviolent action certainly recognises its role in support of peace
education where our capacities and competence are the most impressive. As until now,
we will organize training events in nonviolent conflict resolution and try to respond to
the present needs and requests we’ve already received. Participants of our training
events are people who work in NGOs, media, political parties and education, from the
countries of former Yugoslavia. According to the needs assessment we find all four levels
of training to be important:
– work on techniques and skills of nonviolent conflict transformation (nonviolent
communication; teamwork and decision making; understanding, analysis and
transformation of conflict; etc.)
– Sensitising of violence within society and dissolving of national and other kinds of
prejudice (establishing communication and giving people a chance to hear the other
side)
– Empowering people to work actively in both their local community and society and to
react in an adequate way on violence and violation of their own rights and rights of
their fellow citizens
– Connecting and networking of people from both: different countries of former
Yugoslavia, and different areas of public activity (NGO, media, political parties,
education); and supporting their mutual cooperation.
With the opening of an office in Belgrade and broadening our capacities we’ve
intensified our work with a chance to respond to more requests for training events.
However, since we are not able to meet the demands of all those who are interested,
we see our role in education of multipliers, and organisation and development of The
Training for Trainers Programme, which includes special attention to the selection of
participants.
An important aspect of our work is support to peace groups and individuals who wish
to work on peace building, nonviolent conflict transformation and sensitising of society
to violence around us. The Belgrade office enables a stronger presence in this part of the region of ex Yugoslavia from which the majority of requests for training events come
from, and therefore it is easier to respond to them and offer support.
We find stronger public presence to be important for our work; in order to include
more people in discussion on those issues we work on our training events.
We think that the Belgrade office should have a special role in dealing with the past
and dissolving prejudice against other nations/ethnic groups, pointing out discrimination
and other forms of violence within society. This kind of work would be accepted more
easily in public if local people do it.
Cooperation with other groups from this area with whom we share the same values:
Gradanski parlament Srbije (Civic Parliament of Serbia) – Cacak, Odbor za gradansku
inicijativu (Civic Initiative Council) – Niš, Most – Beograd, Centar za gradanske inicijative
(Centre for Civis Initiatives) – Kolašin, Fond za humanitarno pravo (Fond for
Humanitarian Law) – Beograd, Žene u crnom (Women in Black)- Beograd, Jukom
(Committee of lawyers) – Beograd, etc. is very important and needed.
CNA is not a national organization. We have offices in Belgrade and Sarajevo with
staff made up of people from different countries of former Yugoslavia. This fact seemed
to be important to the people we talked to on this trip, since it’s really very rare.
Moreover, it is a concrete example of regional cooperation, communication and mutual
peace building and a direct way to promote all of it.
This research has been invaluable for CNA, since we had a chance to personally meet
many NGOs and their activists, and get a better picture of situation in local
communities.
We thank all those individuals we met during this research for their hospitality, time
and useful discussions.