{"id":1046,"date":"2018-12-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwp-balkan.org\/staging\/in-a-divided-bosnia-segregated-schools-persist\/"},"modified":"2018-12-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T00:00:00","slug":"in-a-divided-bosnia-segregated-schools-persist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwp-balkan.org\/staging\/in-a-divided-bosnia-segregated-schools-persist\/","title":{"rendered":"In a Divided Bosnia, Segregated Schools Persist"},"content":{"rendered":"
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TRAVNIK, Bosnia and Herzegovina — The school in this medieval town is divided by a flimsy metal fence and the legacy of war.<\/p>\n

Each day, children stream into the same school building, only to study separately, using separate textbooks, while learning in different languages. The ethnic Croatians from the suburbs are taught in the right side of the building. They are mostly Roman Catholics. The Bosnian Muslim students who live mostly in the city are taught in the left side.<\/p>\n

For many of the students, the split is an unwanted relic of Bosnia’s ethnic wars of the 1990s among Serbs, Croats and Muslims.<\/p>\n

“They don’t want us to socialize in school,” said Iman Maslic, 18, a Muslim student, ”so we go to cafes after class and hang out together there.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But unwanted or not, the divide is deepening in a Bosnia<\/a> where nationalist politicians are again stoking ethnic rivalries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Students from the Bosniak side attending a class in the school in Travnik. For many of the students, the split is an unwanted relic of Bosnia’s ethnic wars of the 1990s among Serbs, Croats and Muslims.<\/span> Credit<\/span>: Laura Boushnak for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The school in Travnik, an ancient capital of the Ottoman province in the Balkans, is emblematic of a part of the country’s education system known as “Two Schools Under One Roof.” It was built in the late 19th century, when Bosnia was an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian empire.<\/p>\n

The Roman Catholic Church owns the building today and operates the school and seminary on the right side. On the left is the state-run high school that controlled the building during the Communist era in the former Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n

The church wants to evict the state school, but the two sides — the Croats and predominantly Muslim Bosniaks — remain entwined by the legacy of the Dayton Accords, the American-led treaty that ended the war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n