At the invitation of our friends from the First Children’s Embassy Megjashi in Skopje, we joined the training team for the In-depth Training of the Peace Education Programme intended for teachers in Macedonia. Since we have cooperated and had joint training with the people from “Međaši”, we were glad to be part of this initiative to support regional peace activities and exchange of trainers, and to participate in developing their peacebuilding trainings.
The training team comprised Albulena Karaga and Ana Bitoljanu from “Međaši”, Blerim Jashari from “Loja”, Tetovo, and Adnan Hasanbegović from CNA.
For years, “Međaši” have been organising training for teachers from different parts of Macedonia, inviting participants of Macedonian and Albanian nationality. Namely, the education system in Macedonia is organised around an ethno-national principle, so peace education programmes and peacebuilding training are imperative for decreasing the harmful consequences of this system on young people, and indirectly diminishing the consequences of the general lack of capacity in Macedonian society to deal with frequent inter-ethnic conflicts and tensions.
The group, made up of dedicated educators concerned for the state of society, responded quite well to the proposed topics and exercises, they were visibly motivated. The training was attended by 16 secondary school teachers from Veles, Skoplje, Gostivar and Debar, involved in the Peace Education Programme that Međaši have been implementing in the past few years in cooperation with educational institutions. All the participants had undergone basic training in peace education, and some of them had also attended the two-day workshop facilitation training. The training outline focused on three segments: capacity building in dealing with conflicts, peacebuilding, and dealing with the past.
As usual, the topics and exercises related to teamwork and understanding conflict were well received and related back to experiences from basic training. With some minor difficulties, there was room to explore one’s own mechanisms and mutual confrontation. When it came to introducing and facilitating workshops on dealing with the past and reconciliation, more participation and observation was needed from the training team in the discussions themselves, and to provide clarification and guidance. It is interesting that a large part of the group had never heard of terms such as “dealing with the past” and “transitional justice”, which indicates that these topics are not talked about in Macedonia.
For someone coming from BiH, this was very unusual, given the impression that little else is discussed back home apart from the war and the past. Unfortunately, this does not mean it is done constructively. Political correctness is prominent in Macedonia, in the sense that war and national conflicts are practically never discussed. For example, when doing exercises on national narratives and taboos, statements were made to the effect of: “We don’t need that, it poisons children.”
However, children will hear prejudice-tainted stories about other nationalities and wars anyway, whether at home or in the street, if not even at school. That is why it was important to point out that a constructive approach to the past can be used to confront its (ab)use for mobilisation and national divisiveness. In that context, I thought it was a good decision to screen “Not a Bird to Be Heard”, a documentary produced by CNA, at the workshop. The film uses simulated dialogue to show the thoughts, emotions and dilemmas of Bosniaks and Croats following the war in BiH. Focusing on the Bosnian context relaxed the group and encouraged them to understand the reasoning behind the process of reconciliation and dealing with the past in Macedonia as well.
An important detail of this training was the presence of a representative of the Muslim-Macedonian ethnic group which is quite exposed to discrimination from one side and attempts at assimilation from the other side of the majority community. It was important that this groups could make room to discuss how this minority community is being denied its right to identity, language and religion, and to additionally point out the nationalist tendencies present in Macedonian society that often lead to an acceptance of “cohabitation” of Albanian and Macedonian nationalisms.
The training was rounded off by workshops on planning peacebuilding activities to be implemented by training participants in cooperation with the team from “Međaši”. It was shown that this type of cooperation with participants from previous trainings works well. The participants are motivated for such activities, with the dilemmas and reservations that always exist. It seems that the participants were empowered by this training to work in demanding areas, such as raising awareness about inter-ethnic conflicts from the past and the present nationalism, also in the education system.
It would be important to continue the practice of regional exchange of trainers because, apart from comparisons of contexts between countries in the region being useful for better understanding the problems in each society, this concept also develops cross-border cooperation and enables better insight into peace actions in the region, which is very important for the peacebuilding process in the Balkans.
We were glad to find out that we have allies in Macedonia who are deeply and genuinely dedicated to peace action and it was a pleasure and an inspiration to be on the same team with them.