INITIATING THE PROCESS OF RECONCILIATION IN THE ‘DAYTON TRIANGLE’: INVOLVING YOUNG LEADERS IN ESTABLISHING DIALOGUE, COOPERATION, TRUST AND OVERCOMING THE PAST


Head of project: Vesna Pesic, Ruzica Rosandic

Project coordinator: Marina Jelic

Partner organisations - Center for Human Rights, from Sarajevo, and Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, from Zagreb, Forum of Tuzla citizens


Experience has shown that even after wars and long-lasting conflicts, people do want to live normal lives, overcome the past and begin rebuilding disrupted relations. Our country is no exception from a historical point of view. A recent survey researching willingness and readiness for reconciliation in the ‘Dayton Triangle’ region (amongst Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks) showed that there is individual capacity for reconciliation in all three environments. However, subjective potential, alone, is insufficient to bring reconciliation about. The process of reconciliation is a complex and risky one, as corroborated by the experience of the Centre for Peace and Democracy Development (CPDD) associates. It depends on overcoming deep suspicions that cannot be dispelled only on the individual plane. Realisation of individual potential for reconciliation depends as much on the process the individuals themselves must undergo as on political will expressed at various social levels. In short, it depends on the development of democratic culture.
The processes of building lasting peace, life together, co-operation and new relations in the region have not seriously taken root although the Dayton Accords were signed in 1995. The problem this project wishes to address relates to the halt in the process of reconciliation in the ‘Dayton Triangle’ countries. Our reality lacks all prerequisites for initiating and deepening the process of reconciliation – building trust in the other party’s intentions, restoring the perception of the members of an until recently hostile group as human beings (re-humanisation), willingness to co-operate, readiness to offer/accept apology. Systematic overcoming of the past is lacking as well. There are no important preconditions for reconciliation.

It is really difficult to imagine this region guaranteeing stable peace and prosperity in the near future if such a relevant issue is left to spontaneous events alone, if there are no systematic, focussed social actions. Restoration of trust and readiness for co-operation can be consolidated only inasmuch as it is possible to remember ‘that’ past, to unblock collective memory. Recollection of the war past is obviously still bearable only to the degree to which each side can (distortedly) perceive itself as its greatest victim. Readiness to offer and accept apology and re-humanisation of the other are possible only after that barrier is surmounted.

The main goal is to get together a generation of young political leaders in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and train them to conduct the processes of reconciliation within their own organizations and communities to promote dialogue, cooperation and collaboration. They are brought together to discuss and share their perspectives and insights about the recent conflicting past, rebuild the trust  and try to think collaboratively about the future they are going to shape with their political activism. In this process a number of known exerts will work together with young political leaders as lecturers, guides and facilitators.

The process of participation during the seminars will have direct impacts on the participants: the experience during these discussions changes their attitudes and behaviour. Returning to their settings, they have already started to transmit the acquired insights to their direct environments - the political parties they belong to – and tried to influence and change the party policy related to the issues addressed during the gathering. These seminars will be an occasion to share these experiences.