Depending on who you ask, two decades ago there was either a war for freedom or a conflict between a state and a guerrilla group in Kosovo. This is how two different ethnic communities: the Albanians and the Serbs begin to talk about their bloody past. Over the years, both sides have tried to develop a more […]
The Balkan Perspectives podcast is forumZFD’s audio format on Dealing with the Past and Peace Education in the Western Balkans. The podcast is produced in four languages (Albanian, BHCS, Macedonian and English) by the forumZFD offices in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia.
As I was pondering how to start this article, I recalled how after the revolution or putsch of 5 October (depending how various people see it), when Milošević was kicked out of politics, the great reactivation of youth occurred sometime around mid-2006 with the referendum for the amendment of the Constitution of Serbia and the parliamentary elections of 2008.[…]
The process of transitional justice and dealing with the past has been going on for over twenty-six years. However, it seems that credible information about the war, and about the process of reconciliation between the countries in the region is not available to young people in Serbia. The Balkan Perspectives interviewees agree that institutions bear great responsibility,[…]
Throughout history, the region of the Western Balkans has been an overly complex one. For some, the Balkans produced more history than it can consume, and this has been the root cause or the casus belli of numerous conflicts in the 1990s. However, for other critics, cultural diversity poses a potential threat to the region. The diversity[…]
Just as bridges are important to cross from one side of the river to the other, so are the youth and their role in allowing our society to keep moving forward. We would all appreciate relying on a safe bridge that would not let us fall into the river. So, what makes us feel safer while crossing[…]
“If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall begin with the youth,” Mahatma Gandhi once said. The same could be applied in the case of peace and reconciliation process in the Balkans. Young people, born during and after the wars in Yugoslavia, are precisely those who can play the crucial role in building[…]
The process of transitional justice and dealing with the past has been going on for over twenty-six years. However, it seems that credible information about the war, and about the process of reconciliation between the countries in the region is not available to young people in Serbia. The Balkan Perspectives interviewees agree that institutions bear great responsibility,[…]
When we talk about Kosovo’s tragic past, this narrative often ends with NATO’s air strike campaign, the intervention which we see as the end of the period of violence in Kosovo. On the 23rd anniversary of the 78-day-long NATO air raid, we remember the short history of the fall of Yugoslavia and the position of Kosovo as[…]
The national day of guilt was marked on 26 February 2022, the thirtieth anniversary since the start of the secret state project of depriving non-Slovenian citizens of their civil rights and expelling them from Slovenia. After WWII the Germans began raising awareness about guilt and taking responsibility ten years or so later, until it became collectively accepted[…]
Photo: Personal archive Kosovo’s declaration of independence could have meant the beginning of a different relationship of Serbia regarding human rights violations in the near future. It could have been a beginning of the implementation of a new type of politics which would show a clear denunciation of war crimes as well as those who committed, organized[…]