June 10, 30, 14, 15, and 16

June 10: Today I worked with NDC on a presentation and activity to present to the United World College summer school. Elvir, the co-cordinator for NDC presented information that focused on the importance dialogue and reconciliation. Later, we separated into two groups for an activity to better understand these terms. I worked with about 30 students to facilitate the activity called Dialogue about Dialogue. They were given a list of words related to dialogue and asked to put them in a hierarchy as a group. This way, they were learning the terms and trying to abide by the terms as they were putting them into categories. After the activity, the kids were brought together again to present to the rest of the class. Everyone was very engaged with the activity so it worked well. After, Elvir presented a real life project (their student integration project in Stolac) to incorporate the terms and concepts learned earlier into a real life situation.

In the afternoon I received material from another member of NDC to proofread. It is about 40 pages so I think I will be working on this more next week as well.

June 13: At NDC today I finished all of the edits because they had to be put into the computer right away… it took up my whole day.

June 14: Today I went on field visit with GAP to have a meeting with the Mayor and review the cities work on implementing a better water system in Nevesinje (which is about an hour away from Mostar) and building a road that connects them to other cities leads to a historical bridge that was built during the Ottoman empire (for tourists business hopefully). I'm so excited!! This will be my first major project with GAP. I also received some documents from the GAP Sarajevo office to proofread. Wahooo!!!  Ha… kind of weird to be excited for but I kind of like doing that stuff :)

June 15 and 16: The past couple days in my internships I have been editing documents (success stories) in English and doing some research. Tomorrow I will be going to Sarajevo to meet with GAP members stationed there as well as meeting with the gender equality team for further internship work. Also, on Monday, the directors of our internship are coming on Monday to visit and see how things are going.

June 8

Today I was able to attend the UWC sponsored presentation on the political and economic analysis of the conflict in BiH by Srecko Latal, Balkans Analyst for the International Crisis Group. He argued that there is no difference between the middle ages of Germany, France, the Former Yugoslavia, or anywhere else in Europe. Nationalism was everywhere. It was not the cause of the break-up. However, the Kosovo battle of the 1300’s can be found as a reason behind the atrocities because of Milosevic’s misinterpretation in a famous speech to the people of the Yugoslav federation. Milosevic was basically saying to the Serbian people that the battle of Kosovo ended with a Serbian military defeat from the Ottoman Empire (the Turkish people who were Muslim) and Serbs were forced to succumb to the will of the Muslims. However, Sreko Latal, Balkans Analyst said that the Kosovo battle was a tie. It was not until 70 year later that the Serbians succumbed to the Ottoman rule.

Another major reason for BiH’s current deadlock state after the fall of Yugoslavia is because the mourning and reconciliation phase was suppressed. It was suppressed after WWII by the Communist/Socialist regime and after the fall of Yugoslavia divisions were eminent and no dialogue was used between the different groups which snuffed out any reconciliation.

When looking at reconciliation in other countries such as France and Germany after WWII, reconciliation was a government driven process; it was not suppressed by the government like in the former Yugoslavia. By the end, both Germany and France worked together to print a joint text book of the history of WWII. BiH still has different historical text books for each ethnic group which only deepen the divide between the communities. In BiH, Latal says people are focusing on the end result too much. The process of reconciliation is the most important part. Basically what Latal was saying is that Europe and Yugoslavia have different concepts. Europe was working towards reconciliation and democratization while Yugoslavia was working for brotherhood, unity and socialism.

Latal gave another example of reconciliation in Rwanda to compare to BiH. He argued that Rwanda’s reconciliation was much faster than in the Balkans because in the Balkans reconciliation was not supported by dialogue. In Rwanda, one million people were killed in 10 days in 1994.These numbers would be shocking to anyone. However, they had the largest human rights index increase and economic growth by 2000. BiH on the other hand is currently in a deadlock position after their war ended in 1995.

As far as the international community is concerned, Latal said that they never had common view on the Balkans. In the end, they did sponsor the Daton Peace Accord which was basically a truce that ended up creating a “Frankenstein monster” when it came to the political system of BiH. The Daton Peace Accord only focused on short term goals which are now hindering BiH more than ever.

June 10: Today I worked with NDC on a presentation and activity to present to the United World College summer school. Elvir, the co-cordinator for NDC presented information that focused on the importance dialogue and reconciliation. Later, we separated into two groups for an activity to better understand these terms. I worked with about 30 students to facilitate the activity called Dialogue about Dialogue. They were given a list of words related to dialogue and asked to put them in a hierarchy as a group. This way, they were learning the terms and trying to abide by the terms as they were putting them into categories. After the activity, the kids were brought together again to present to the rest of the class. Everyone was very engaged with the activity so it worked well. After, Elvir presented a real life project (their student integration project in Stolac) to incorporate the terms and concepts learned earlier into a real life situation.

In the afternoon I received material from another member of NDC to proofread. It is about 40 pages so I think I will be working on this more next week as well.

June 13: At NDC today I finished all of the edits because they had to be put into the computer right away… it took up my whole day.

June 14: Today I went on field visit with GAP to have a meeting with the Mayor and review the cities work on implementing a better water system in Nevesinje (which is about an hour away from Mostar) and building a road that connects them to other cities leads to a historical bridge that was built during the Ottoman empire (for tourists business hopefully). I'm so excited!! This will be my first major project with GAP. I also received some documents from the GAP Sarajevo office to proofread. Wahooo!!!  Ha… kind of weird to be excited for but I kind of like doing that stuff :)

June 15 and 16: The past couple days in my internships I have been editing documents (success stories) in English and doing some research. Tomorrow I will be going to Sarajevo to meet with GAP members stationed there as well as meeting with the gender equality team for further internship work. Also, on Monday, the directors of our internship are coming on Monday to visit and see how things are going.

June 7

Today I visited Stolac with NDC. Like I said before, they are working on an education integration program with the school. While I was there, I met the students they were working with and found out more about what they are doing there. NDC is working to bridge the ethnic divide in Stolac. This project was implemented by NDC Mostar (where I am interning) and their aim was to enhance relations between different ethnic groups in the town of Stolac. Their goal was also to improve interethnic relations in an ethnically divided school. They believe that this is the main prerequisite for tackling negative consequences of division within a community marked by ethnically divided education systems. Basically, they were trying to support integrated and inclusive education in Stolac high school. As the school year ends, this project is coming to a close until next fall. But before they closed it, I had the opportunity yesterday to visit the school talk with the students about what NDC is doing. They seemed really proud of the integration progress they have made. One student was telling me that in their orchestra, they have both Croats and Muslims playing together. They also work on a joint newspaper. NDC was there to review and document the newspaper articles for later reports. This is such a big deal here in BiH because currently, students of different ethnicities are completely separate from each other in the school system.

When I spoke with the students at Stolac, they seemed very proud to tell me the progress they are making with integration of Croats and Muslims at the school. They said that they work on a joint newspaper together as well as collectively playing in an orchestra together. I was sitting there talking to two Croats and a Muslim. It seemed to me that they are making great strides toward integration. Because of the legislation in place, NDC has barrier within the school system that they must go around—the biggest one being the fact that ethnic groups have separate curriculums and therefore do not have class together. Without government cooperation, NDC’s project with school integration can only go so far and divisions within society will remain.

June 6th

I had the opportunity today to be a part of   the United World College (UWC) summer school/conference. There I met international students   from all across the globe. We had a lecture on the introduction to peace studies and theories with a dynamic discussion of conflict cases in small groups. The discussion heated up quickly when we began talking about the different ethnic groups in BiH. We had a Bosniak Muslim, Orthodox Serb, and Catholic Croat in the room voicing different opinions about discrimination, territories of different ethnicities and the root cause behind the ethnic divisions after the war. It was so exciting to be directly at the forefront of the divisions that are still occurring here. I was informed that here in Mostar, Muslims and Croats go to the same school but have separate classes. They share the same building but have completely different curriculums. One of the major discussions we had was about the differences in history facts each ethnic group learns according to their specific ethnic group. The Serbian student explained that it wasn’t that they necessarily changed the truth

 of historical facts to make Serbs look better for instance, it was that they omitted some facts to make Serbs look more favorable in Serbian text books. This seemed to be the case with the other ethnic groups as well. This is one of the reasons why NDC’s work with integrating school systems is so important! The different ethnic groups here are not learning the same history—they are learning history that caters to their ethnic group. By being in separate curriculums, they are deepening the divide between them.

The Bosniak Muslim also mentioned how his parents provide a major influence on how he feels toward the different ethnic groups. He said that if his parents told him all his life to hate someone, he probably would. He also said that many of his friends are like that which again, creates major divisions between these people. The Muslim boy even said that on Friday nights he never goes to the Croat side of town for fear of his life. He says that some people may recognize him as a Muslim or recognize him from a group that was Muslim affiliated. The Coat girl also chimed in by saying that two years ago she started hanging out with a few Muslim friends, but once her Croat friends found out; they stopped hanging out with her and haven’t talked to her for the past two years. As you can see, divisions between ethnic groups are still deep because of institutionalism and cultural prejudice.

            In the afternoon we all got back together for another lecture on the history of the former Yugoslavia. The presenter started in the middle ages and went up to the war in 1992. He was trying to make a point that by looking back at history, one can see the root causes for the ethnic divisions in the former Yugoslavia. I am not going to go in depth on this because it was a very dense two hour lecture. However, I would suggest reading The Bridge Betrayed: Religious Genocide in Bosnia by Michael A. Sells if you would like to know more about this subject.

We then watched a BBC documentary that was called “The Death of Yugoslavia.” This documentary came out in 1996, just after the war so everything was still very fresh and the political leaders that were interviewed were very open about what they had done because they still thought that they were right. If the documentary were to have come out now, it is very unlikely that w could get that kind of information out of the political leaders about the war.

June 1st

When I arrived at GAP today, there was not much for me to do because the internship coordinator here is out for the rest of the week. However, at NDC I sat in on two meetings. The first meeting was in their native language so unfortunately I could not understand a single word they were saying. Later one of the workers at NDC told me that they were discussing more on their education integration project and new projects as well. I was able to help them on a few grammatical errors in their document. Being able to actually help for the first time felt good, even if it was small. I hope that I will be able to do that more often because when reading through their reports, I have noticed quite a few simple errors that I can easily correct.

Anyway, during the second meeting, a member of NDC met with a woman from Finland, Alum from United World College, who was organizing this seven day peace studies conflict prevention and mediation workshop/summer school for local and international students ranging from ages 16-19. This workshop/summer school is being put on by the United World College (there is one in the United States). This is going to be completely funded by the cultural foundation of Finland so students do not have to pay to go. This woman (I forgot her name) was at NDC specifically to ask if one of the representatives from NDC would be a guest speaker and to finalize details and topics. Once that was done, we chatted for a while, discussing briefly our educational background, swapping names of good books to read, and interesting places go in Mostar. Once she found out my age, interests and what I was studying in college, she asked me to be a part of this peace studies workshop. It starts next week Monday and will cover peace studies framework, theories, the Bosnian conflict and its history history by a local history professor, conflict prevention and the role of media and conflict prevention discussed by a war reporter, conflict management and tool analysis, international humanitarian law presented by the Red Cross in Sarajevo, history of the divided cities of Mostar and Belgrade and NDC’s presentation on their education integration project. Elvir Duliman, the project coordinator for NDC thinks it would be a great idea for me to attend this. I think so too! There will be students from Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Sudan, India, Sierra Leone, Finland, Sweden, the United States and more.

            Once she left, one of the members of NDC took me out for an afternoon coffee where we discussed more in depths about their integration project, the importance of it, and what the initial problems they are seeing in elementary schools in regards to the role of identity. She was saying that here, children are only identify themselves as a boy or a girl and either Croat, Serb, or Bosniak. This poses to be a problem because it creates greater divisions within society. They don’t realize that they can be individuals aside from just on their ethnicity/ religion, (Croat Catholics, Serb Orthodox, and Bosniak Muslims) and have commonalities that cross ethnic lines. Growing up with the mentality of being an individual solely on ones ethnicity will only create deeper divisions in the future. That is one of the many reasons why NDC is working on their integration project.

            We also discussed the problems with politics in BiH and the corruption as well as her story as a refugee in the war.  Many people that I have met here stayed in Mostar for the entire duration of the war. Even now, she told me, when thunder cracks in the middle of the night like it did a couple of days ago, she would wake up in terror thinking it is a bomb going of f just meters from her house like it did when she was a small child. Terrified and confused, she grabbed a cigarette to calm her nerves. The affects of war here are still present today. That is why institutions like NDC and GAP are working so diligently to create a better life for citizens in the future.

May 31st

Today was my first day at the Governance Accountability Project (GAP). Once I arrived, a woman was there to greet me and show me my desk. There, she gave me a thick binder full of documented reports of the projects completed by GAP and was entitled The MAP Book (a.k.a. the Municipal Action Plan Handbook). It took me about two hours to read the majority of the material which I found to be very useful to get a better feel of what this organization does. According to GAP, they are “increasing the capacity of a critical mass of municipalities to better serve their citizens within a policy and fiscal framework of good governance.” They have local interventions that provide municipalities with the tools and resources they need to better serve their citizens and to build stronger communities. Examples of this include establishing modern citizen service centers, improving municipal finance, building municipal capacity to plan and implement capital improvement projects, strengthening municipal associations, identifying legislative improvements and priorities, operating the local Self-Governance development strategy, establishing a municipal role in the development of legislation, and strengthening the voice of cities and municipalities. After reading, I left to my second internship, NDC.

 At NDC I also did a large amount of reading. The Nansen Dialogue Center in Sarajevo just published their 2010 report a few days ago on their website so NDC here in Mostar thought it would be appropriate for me to read this 20 page report on their projects for the year to better understand their organization and what they do. Their main focus this past year was working with the integration of different schools. Specifically, one of their projects included bridging the ethnic divide in Stolac. This project was implemented by NDC Mostar (where I am interning) and their aim was to enhance relations between different ethnic groups in the town of Stolac. Their goal was also to improve interethnic relations in an ethnically divided school. They believe that this is the main prerequisite for tackling negative consequences of division within a community marked by ethnically divided education systems. Basically, they were trying to support integrated and inclusive education in Stolac high school. The other piece of material I read was a strategy booklet for 2011-2015. This one talked about problems that have not been addressed directly and different strategies for project implementation. These readings also took about two hours and after that, I was free to go. Because these are the beginning stages of my internship, the goal right now is educating myself as much as possible on my two internships and understanding exactly what they do and how they are helping the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

May 30th

Today was my first day at the Nansen Dialogue Centre (NDC) in Mostar. Orientation only lasted about an hour. Elvir Duliman, the project coordinator, briefed me on their current student ethno-integration project that will be coming to a close within a week or so. Soon after, he introduced me to the different material I need to read before actually getting started with the internship. One of his co-workers gave me three yearly reports to read from 2000, 2003, and 2004 that show NDC’s specific objectives for that year and their achievements. I think this is basically just to get a better feel for what this organization actually does. The last piece of material is a 40 page document of research from NDC and Safeworld that provides a community-level perspective on the current stalemate and encourages international actors to look beyond the immediate deadlock in BiH, thus forcing us to consider how their engagement can contribute to the minimizing longer-term threats to the country’s delicate stability. My second internship, GAP, was established by the United States and therefore had the day off today because it is Memorial Day after all. However, I will have my first day with them tomorrow morning.