We conducted the fourth phase of the Training of Trainers in Peacebuilding from 3 to 12 October 2025 in BiH. This phase brought the formal training program to a close and opened up the next phase: working with participants on designing and implementing activities focused on peacebuilding.
The fourth phase was the final time that everyone was brought together and the programme consisted of two parts: a study trip and developing ideas for activities in peacebuilding. For the study trip, we also invited several activists from Serbia and Kosovo to join us, in order to expand the informal network of contacts for people dedicated to peacebuilding, and the training team also included our Davorka Turk in addition to the core members.
The study trip included visits to marked and unmarked sites of suffering, conversations with people from victims’ associations and youth workers, joint evening reflections, and finally concluded with a workshop/conversation with three war veterans who are also peace activists.
We visited the following places: Trusina, Jablanica, Konjic, Sarajevo, Istočno Sarajevo, Tarčin, Ahmići, Vitez.
For some of the younger training participants, the context of BiH and the influence of the past on the present was new. Through the study trip they had the opportunity to recognise the need to find ways to address the violent past so that it does not limit new generations and produce hatred and a desire for revenge.
The three-day planning session that followed was arduous, thorough, and demanding, but we emerged from it with several activities whose implementation seems promising and is the product of group work by cross-border sub-teams. Addressing polarising memorialisation practices of the wartime past, non-violence as a goal and as a process to be preserved in the struggle for a better society, combating hate speech, and workshops for young people are just some of the ideas that were developed, and that you will be hearing more about in the coming year.
Six months of intensive work, consisting of about thirty days of in-person work and additional online consultations, has come to an end, but this is just the beginning.
