The war, which was being fought on the territory of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, ended with the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995 after four years of bloody fighting. A layperson might therefore assume that more than twenty years later, the situation in this Balkan country endowed with beautiful nature is at least politically and economically stable. Yet the presence of international institutions and the need for the existence of the local Nansen Dialogue Centre suggest otherwise.

Although Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has made progress toward democracy since the 1993-95 war, the ethnic distribution of the population still poses a threat to Bosnian society today. The threat lies in the interconnection of ethnicity and political parties. Throughout the entire post-war period, no political party with rhetoric and foundations that did not support one of the three ethnic groups has managed to come to power in a significant way. The end of the war conflict did not bring a major shift in solving the issue of the geographic distribution of the three ethnic groups, as Bosnian Serbs, Muslims, and Croats remain mixed even today. As a result, contemporary BiH is still divided in a very simplified internal scheme into Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This, however, does not imply that only Bosnian Serbs live in Republika Srpska. Rather, it means that Bosnian Serbs constitute the dominant group in the territory of Republika Srpska, and across the entire territory of BiH there are still many multiethnic municipalities today.

The trained doctor Ljuljjeta Goranci Brkić devoted a large part of her professional and personal life to dealing with war stigmas in her home country. Through educational seminars, she introduces the wider public, including audiences beyond the country, to the way she seeks to achieve social change. She also presented her way of working and thinking to students of the Katedry rozvojových a environmentálních studií (KRES) Palackého Univerzity v Olomouci during their June visit to BiH within the project „Rozvojová spolupráce na vlastní oči“.

Currently, Dr. Goranci Brkić together with her colleague Nebojsou Šavijou-Valhou is the leading figure of the Nansen Dialogue Centre (NDC) in Sarajevo, which adopted the ideas of the Norwegian polar explorer, scientist, diplomat, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930). For example, in his work „Nestekjærlighet“ from 1922 he stated that „no realistic politics in a civilized society is conceivable if it is not based on love for neighbors, reciprocity, kindness, and trust. This is the foundation on which all human cooperation must be built.“

If we were to apply Nansen’s ideas to the current situation in the Balkans, then the main purpose of NDC is to contribute to a higher degree of national reconciliation and tolerance in BiH and to increase citizens’ participation in democratic processes and institutions through seminars on interethnic dialogue, as well as training, courses, conferences, public lectures, publication of brochures, books, scientific research, and cultural projects.

Students themselves against school segregation

The projects implemented by NDC are focused on groups that often have a decisive influence on the situation in the local community when it comes to democratization processes, respect for human rights, tolerance, and reconciliation. They include local authorities (municipal workers, mayors, civil servants), teachers, political parties, returning residents, refugees, and, last but not least, youth.

It was precisely this last target group that spoke out much more clearly last summer in the city of Jajce, where NDC started its activities in 2009. Local high school students, regardless of ethnic affiliation, expressed their opposition to the decision of the representatives of the Central Bosnia Canton: to segregate the school into a Muslim part (Bosniaks) and a Croat part. Their actions are supported by NDC and can rightly be considered an example of a so-called „success story.“ Nothing remains to believe that this is setting a trend that especially the younger generation will follow. A trend that over time will completely make people forget the horrors of the war committed by all three ethnic groups.

NDC in Sarajevo was, since its establishment in 2000, funded by the Norwegian government. At present, funding is shared by more donors, but according to Dr. Goranci Brkić, there are few doors she has not knocked on in her effort to keep this project viable. Although BiH still has a long way to go, from the perspective of development aid donors it is slowly moving to the margins of interest. Donors are slowly leaving BiH and moving to places of new urgent conflicts, for example Syria.

It can be considered good news that NDC in Sarajevo is not the only center operating in line with the principles and methodologies of the Nansen Dialogue Network. The driving force of NDC’s active members remains the inner conviction of the meaningfulness and necessity of this kind of approach to developing Bosnian society, that is, a bottom-up approach. The results, of course, cannot appear immediately, since the mental reconfiguration of an individual, and by extension of whole society, could be compared to an ultramarathon among long-distance runs.

Text: Michal Blaško, Foto: Veronika Rojová a Fabio Iguavita, KRES PřF UP v Olomouci