See them in yourself

By Clémentine Momas

This past month was very intense and I learned a lot: I started from knowing nothing about Kosovo to being able to have a discussion with friends and family about it and follow the news about what is happening in the Balkans. The fact that we did not get the chance to go to Kosovo physically was still really disappointing: we did not get the chance to meet people from there and get immersed in the culture. Despite the excitement and the interesting meetings, it was hard for me to focus on my computer all day long. I hope that I will be able to go to Kosovo soon to discover the country and visit the organizations that we met with! 

Despite all of that, I am very grateful for Anne de Graaf and Nini Pieters for putting so much effort into organizing this virtual trip and booking meetings with so many different organizations and people. I was pleasantly surprised that Kosovo’s former Prime Minister agreed to meet with us. This meeting was very inspirational and I loved hearing about his perspectives and his own experience.

Through this course, I also got the chance to create a podcast about feminism and women’s rights in Kosovo. It made me rethink the privileges I have had while growing up in Western Europe and to think about feminism differently. I also came across very touching stories and realized that feminism can be used as a peacebuilding tool.

This course also taught me that there is no such thing as a single solution regarding peacebuilding: each approach should be tailored to the country and the situation where peacebuilding is taking place. Achieving peace in a post-conflict area such as Kosovo is a tough and long process. The tensions between Kosovo and Serbia are surely not as easily solvable as President Trump’s actions currently suggest. Furthermore, I was exposed to many Serbian minority organizations and people through this course, and I could see that both sides fear the other: in Mitrovica, the Serbs were scared to go to the South and the Albanians were afraid of going to the North. Both have misconceptions and are influenced by their heavy historical background. Even today, the young people we met are still prejudiced against the other ethnicity in some way, even though they may have friends from both sides. Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised to see that many NGOs are working hard to tackle the division between the two communities.

This quote that I got from our lecturer Anne de Graaf is very relevant to the situation in Kosovo and any peacebuilding attempt in general: "You shouldn’t try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes but instead, try to see them in yourself." This quote really stuck with me and made me also think about the way I interact with others, especially with people from a culture or a situation that is different than mine.

To conclude, despite being online, this Peace Lab course taught me a lot about the situation and history of the Balkans and peacebuilding. It was one of the most rewarding courses that I took during my AUC journey and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Human Rights and in learning about peacebuilding!

Scattered reflections

By Salomé Petit

It was not the local or national political power, exigencies, the fears of a broader war, nor the influence and pressure from the international community that created the shift. It was not a particular religious tradition: the stories in fact cut across religions. It was not political, economic, or military power in any of the cases. What then, created a moment, a turning point, of such significance that it shifted whole aspects of a violent, protracted setting of conflict? I believe it was the serendipitous appearance of the moral imagination in human affairs.

--The Moral Imagination by Lederach (2005)

I have been thinking endlessly during thePeace Lab course what peace means to me. I first thought of peace as having the privilege to not be in the constant mode of survival that conflict forces on people. Yet, this conception seems rather limited. Far from being a personal understanding of peace, it is paradoxically contextualized in conflict. Similar to participants in our project when asked “How do you personally imagine peace?”, I have had trouble dichotomizing personal and political understandings of peace. Though at first against the purpose of the aforementioned question, my inability to describe my own imagination of peace has given me food for thought.  

Wright Mills in 1959 wrote that structural history and personal biography are inherently connected. While our project was taking form I realized that in Kosovo, you cannot draw a clear line between personal and political understandings of peace. The symbolism of daily life in Kosovo reflects violence and conflict. Something as simple as crossing a bridge, travelling, having a coffee at a café can put you at risk of violence. Imagine that… I can’t. But that’s not important because the essence of peacebuilding is imagining peace. This is where moral imagination comes in. It refers to the capacity to imagine peace and develop creative and constructive initiatives. That is, create responses to directly address the daily manifestations of violence which with time, will ultimately break the patterns of conflict. 

During the meetings with organizations in Kosovo, I kept asking myself, why after 20 years of initiatives, Kosovo was still not at peace. Philosopher Bruno Bettelheim said that “violence is the behaviour of someone incapable of imagining other solutions to the problem at hand”. Thereby, peace can only come by a shift in perception, a turning point, a momentum. Could this be the U.S. peace deal? I don’t know. I believe that peacebuilding is a creative process and that Kosovo needs new and creative solutions.

Since Peace Lab ended, I have been in contact with some students from the University of Pristina. They want to take on a larger project and ask students in the Faculty of Social Sciences to describe, draw and represent their imaginations of peace. I don’t know if this project will go through but their enthusiasm only confirmed the conclusion of our project. Young people are trying to create a momentum for peace on the ground and who better to come up with creative and innovative solutions for Kosovo than the youth?

As a final thought, I’d like to say that by far Kosovars are the most hopeful people in the world. This art piece reminded me of that. 

 

Othering and belonging

By Eline Koopman

 

All readings have been read, all exams have been made, all presentations have been presented and all projects have been wrapped up. The end of Peace Lab, as well as the end of my second year at AUC are in sight. While I am looking forward to a summer filled with sun, laughter and new adventures in my home country as online travelling seems to continue to be the only option for now, I am also quite sad to end the academic year like this, as well as having to say goodbye to our online Kosovo trip. No Dormfest, no goodbye and ‘see you after summer’ hugs to friends, and no final dinner with the amazing Peace Lab group. However, the last month of virtually travelling through Kosovo truly has been a memorable experience. 

As the course came to an end, together with Rosalie de Kerf, I created an online magazine called ‘Othering and Belonging’. We were interested in the experience of growing up in a society which has been at peace for a longer period of time, known as positive peace, and the experience of youth who grew up in a country where peace is still taking shape, called negative peace. We had conversations over Zoom with Kosovar and Dutch youth who told us about their opinions and experiences of growing up in a ‘peaceful’ country. 

The magazine will guide you through their stories, experiences and sometimes conflicting opinions about matters such as marriage, othering based on someone’s background and the meaning of peace. One of the topics that particularly stuck with me was the question whether the interviewees would marry someone who belonged to the group they considered to be othered most in their society. 

Many of the Kosovar Albanians and Kosovar Serbian interviewees would feel comfortable being friends or neighbours with each other, but would consider marrying yet one step too far in today’s world. When we would ask this question to our Dutch interviewees, we first asked who they considered to be the group that has been othered the most, whether they would feel comfortable marrying someone from that ‘other group’, followed by the question ofwhether they would feel comfortable marrying a person from German origin. The answers we received to these three questions varied greatly. While the question whether the Dutch interviewees would marry someone from the group that would be othered varied from an instant ‘yes’ to answers filled with slightly more hesitation and doubt, the question whether marrying a person from German descent would be acceptable generally resulted in the reaction of ‘Yes, of course, especially if they bring an extra beer!’. 

This made me wonder whether time is really the important factor that could solve all problems throughout the generations coming after conflict, or that some level of othering will always be present regardless the situation. The Kosovar interviewees reminded me once again that 20 years post conflict is not that long ago. It has only been one generation, who are around the same age as I am, growing up in peace. Processes of forgiveness, reconciliation and friendship building simply need time. Steps have been made by many Kosovar youth to study together, go out together and build friendships, not to only co-exist with each other. Will the next step for Kosovar youth, as well as Dutch youth, be saying ‘I do’ to the other without any hesitation?

All in all, the project of creating an online magazine as well as the experience of an online Peace Lab taught me many valuable lessons. I am no longer looking for the ‘bad guy’, as there is no such thing as only one bad guy. There are always multiple perspectives to any story, opinion or even history. When it comes to learning more about peacemaking, peacebuilding and peacekeeping, I can’t wait to put everything that I have learned into practice in real, non-virtual, life. The question is not whether I will go to Kosovo, but when planes will land in a corona free Pristina again.

I want to thank everyone who contributed to creating our magazine, all the organizations we have met during the classes and, of course, all the interviewees with whom we had inspiring conversations. If you are interested in the stories the Kosovar and Dutch youth have to tell, please click on the following link to view our magazine ‘Othering and Belonging’. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed creating it!

https://www.flipsnack.com/BQENVI/peace-lab-othering-and-belonging.html