Article Summary of "Bottom-up Peace Building in Bosnia" by Bruce Hemmer
Citation:
Hemmer, Bruce. Bottom-up Peace Building in Bosnia. PARC News. Spring 1997. Pp. 4, 8.
This Article Summary written by: Mariya Yevsyukova, Conflict Research Consortium
The attitudes among common people in Bosnia are quite pessimistic. Most of them do not
want war and violence to return, but they do not believe that it is in their power to
prevent this from happening. "They depend on Big Brother or the international
community to do this" (p. 4). And this is partly due to a lack of experience with
democracy. The author emphasizes the need for empowerment and building civil society in
the region. Parallel to this there should be efforts directed at reconciliation of the
ethnic groups, including reduction of prejudice built up by propaganda and "healing
psychological war traumas" (p. 4). United together, these efforts constitute
grass-roots peace-building, "a long-term grassroots cultural change project".
One of the ways to implement this is through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The
author worked with one of them, a "Vermont-based NGO called Conflict Resolution
Catalysts (CRC)" (p. 4). With the help of this organization, he created a
multi-ethnic community center in a suburb of Sarajevo, Ilidza. This area, as a result of
Dayton agreement, was transferred from Serbs to the Muslim-Croat federation. The aim of
this project was to establish communication between returning Muslim refugees and resident
Serbs. This was done through activities of common interest such as computers, English
classes or chess matches. The author and his colleagues encouraged Bosnians to take
leading roles in project development and now a Bosnian is temporarily in charge of the
project.
A similar project was developed involving Bosnian youth. Young people from Ilidza met
with young people from Banja Luka, the Serbian part of Bosnia, where similar project was
organized earlier. Young people were excited about establishing cooperative relations with
a group from the Serbian side. Due to a suspicious attitude to politics among Bosnians,
there were no direct discussions of democratic values; the organizers are planning to
incorporate those themes into other activities, such as movie discussions, and to examine
other opportunities and experiences of other NGOs to expand upon this topic. Conflict
resolution workshops based on Dudley Weeks's relationship-focused approach were conducted.
The most difficult part in the organization of the center was not working with the
Bosnian people, but overcoming financial, legal and logistic difficulties. The author
emphasizes the need for regular cooperation between peace-building organizations in a form
of interagency conferences or meetings and the creation of "umbrella
organization". There is a need for extensive research on and publicity for the
grass-roots peace-building organizations.
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