Rest of the course

Friday 10th June

Today we started with with a talk from a guy from the Nansen Dialogue Centre, an NGO working on improving dialogue between the different ethnic groups in BiH and also the region as a whole. It was very interesting when he pointed out the difference between dialogue and debate. Although obvious I had never really thought about this before, that for example when you are in a dialogue you listen to see what the other is saying, when you are debating you listen to see how you can respond with your point. Essentially debate is point scoring and selfish, since you always think about whether you look good, or whether your point of opinion has 'won', whereas in dialogue it isn't bad if you change your opinion, in fact it is a sign of maturity to accept when you are wrong and when something else makes more sense... I think many politicians could learn from this.
After lunch Annukka led a session on transitional justice, the difference between retributive justice, which looks back on what's happened, versus retroactive, which looks back as well as forward, engaging conflicting parties in dialogue. This obviously is quite relevant with cases such as Mladic being arrested... Following this we had a talk from a woman from the OSCE, the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe, about education as a security measure, which also linked in to stuff the man from the Nansen Dialogue Centre had said about how schools can be used as great ways for resolving conflicts, or at least trying to, for example previously how following the war schools were all completely and utterly divided, whereas now they are starting 'Two schools under one roof' in BiH and even some occasional shared lessons (the UWC in Mostar is a great example of this as it also shares a building with one of these systems, so in effect there are three schools under the same roof - Croat, Bosnian and UWC). The final talk was from an american man, Kendal Palmer, who in fact talked about the Northern Ireland conflict and specifically Belfast as a divided city. This was especially interesting to me as theoretically I should know about it yet in schools in the UK we are taught literally nothing about it...

Saturday 11th June

Today we went on a field trip to visit Sarajevo. After a two hour drive through spectacular mountains and lakes we got to the city where we picked up our tour guides. It's very interesting how the first thing they said was how they didn't like to be talking about the war, but since our tour was about Sarajevo in the war they had to. I suppose it makes sense, but stuff like that shouldn't be forgotten or brushed under the carpet...
First we visited the tunnel that connected the city of Sarajevo to the rest of free Bosnia during the seige by Serbian forces, where all people, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks of Sarajevo were victims. We were able to walk in 25 metres of the tunnel, but it actually went originally for 800 metres. It was about a metre wide and a metre and a half high and was literally incredible that every single thing, electricity, armaments, food, all had to be brought through here. We watched a video on what life was like during the siege and it was quite powerful. Since the Serbian forces surrounded the city, there was one central part of Sarajevo known as 'sniper's alley'. This was essentially a region of Sarajevo where Serbian snipers were on the hills on both sides and so could shoot anyone who crossed, which was necessary as there was only one point to get water, the brewery, where natural spring was, and people on the east side had to walk 8km to get it. The video saw people running in zig zag so as to avoid fire, almost like a game as the sniper tried to keep up with the person. It is scary what people will do when they are simply 'following orders'. And it is also remarkable how resilient humans can be. After this we explored Sarajevo's Ottoman old town, where we went to the national historical museum of BiH and also had lunch in traditional style Turkish restaurant. I bought the all important thing, a BiH football shirt (a fake, but good one... and actually what's bigger here is Man Utd and Liverpool shirts...) Afterwards we carried on exploring the streets, and moved into the newer areas, and I can say that Sarajevo seems a very pleasant, cosmopolitan city, and although there are still scars it seems to be recovering well.

Sunday 12th June

The final day. If I'm honest we probably should've timed it so that the field trip to Sarajevo was the last thing, like a reward, also since it was the end of the week everyone was exhausted, but since it was a Sunday there would be stuff closed (there are many churches as well as mosques) so it didn't make much sense to visit then...
Anyway we started with a presentation from a very interesting talk from Sasha, an activist and organiser of 'Women in Black' on both sexism and the phenomena of rape in conflicts. She used the example of how demilitarisation is the one of the best ways to achieve equality, for example in Serbia, where militarism encourages patriarchy and vice versa, and often the church is used as a centre for encouraging this militarism. She also very interestingly pointed out that the strongest militarisation often occurs in peace time, and this is why it is so dangerous. The group she worked for led an ultimately successful campaign to remove conscription in Serbia and now there is a professional army, so no longer is everyone exposed to the patriarchal system.
After lunch one of our facilitators Alen, from BiH, led a workshop about the role of youth in peace building. He talked about his experiences prior to UWC with Save the Children and we looked at how young people and children are better placed, since they have not had the same scars as their parents, to bring peace to post conflict zones.
Faced with a depleting number since so many people had already left, we had our closing ceremony in the afternoon and then spent the evening relaxing in a cafe by the river.

Monday 13th June

Departure day. The college arranged for four of us to be picked up by car where we were taken to Sarajevo airport and then me to the bus station, where I was picked up by my co-year Nikolina, and her dad, who drove me to their house in the nearby town of Pale. Interestingly enough this town, which is part of 'eastern Sarajevo' part of the autonomous 'Republika Srbska', is where family of both Mladic and Karadzic, two Serbian war criminals, live. It was also the capital of Republika Srbska during the war. We had a walk round and now it is a fast growing new town, with a pleasant central square but if I'm honest it was a bit too new to have much character. Although at least there is still plenty of cafe culture. We met some of Nikolina's friends and had a nice stroll around, past her school and the Serbian university there.


I'm writing this on Tuesday 14th June, and this afternoon we will go to Sarajevo, and then in the evening I will get the overnight bus to Pristina, in Kosovo. Because of problems with my second year in Belgrade, I am staying an extra two days in Kosovo.