The seventh Mir Paqe Мир peacebuilding training was held in Berovo, North Macedonia from 12 to 21 April 2024, jointly organised by Peace Action Prilep – Tetovo / MKD, Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution from Skopje/MKD and CNA Sarajevo – Belgrade.
The training was held in three languages with interpretation provided between Albanian and BCS/Macedonian. There were 17 participants from the triangle comprising Serbia – North Macedonia – Kosovo.
Two years since the sixth iteration of this training, we organised it anew and received a total of 50 applications from which we selected 18 participants. All in all, slightly fewer applicants than two years ago, the least from North Macedonia and the most from Kosovo. It turned out that many of the participants had been persuaded to apply by friends who had previously attended the training.
The training included school/university teachers, students, activists, people fluent in two of the working languages, and the average age of the group was 35.
Apart from travel difficulties, because of which one participant could not make it to Berovo, the training started with a few people falling sick, and their numbers fluctuated during the training, but that was not the only difficulty. The training was very demanding, both psychologically and physically, especially for the team of trainers. We came away with food for thought and thoughts for updating the training manual section on “difficulties during the training”.
The essential objective was met, generally speaking, dialogue and understanding were established among the participants to a significant degree, they went through the emotional process of dealing with the feelings they and others have about the traumatic past, a safe space was created where they could look at their patterns of behaviour in conflict, and motivation was raised to continue cooperation after the training.
Several ideas were mentioned in that regard, such as holding similar peacebuilding trainings in other locations and in different formats, introducing peacebuilding as a school subject, etc.
the team of trainers included:
Boro Kitanoski – Peace Action, Prilep – Tetovo / MKD
Luan Imeri – Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution from Skopje/MKD
Amina Kaja – Pristina
Tamara Zrnović – CNA Sarajevo
Nenad Vukosavljević – CNA Belgrade