Centre for Nonviolent Action

Last updated
Centre for Nonviolent Action
AbbreviationCNA
Formation1997;27 years ago (1997)
Type NGO
Legal status Nonprofit
PurposeBuilding of sustainable peace in the region of former Yugoslavia
Headquarters Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina , and Belgrade, Serbia
Region
Balkan
Methodspeace education, publishing and video production
Website

Centre for Nonviolent Action (Serbo-Croatian: Centar za nenasilnu akciju, abbr. CNA) is a peace organization focused on building sustainable peace in the region of former Yugoslavia. It was founded in 1997 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and expanded to Belgrade, Serbia in 2001. The organisation's main objective is to promote nonviolence and dialogue through trust-building among people from the region as well as a constructive approach to dealing with the past. [1]

Contents

Mission

CNA focuses on cross-border work throughout Balkan countries. [2] Its mission is to achieve sustainable societies, in which people value diversity, critical thinking, taking responsibility for their community, and willingness to reassess one's attitudes. Their work focuses on the promotion of peace as a basic social value, with the main focus of dealing with the history of the Balkan region. [1]

Background

The Yugoslav Wars had a strong ethnopolitical background. In the post-war period, there was a strong need to find constructive ways to deal with the sufferings and disasters caused by the wars. CNA was founded as an initiative to bring together people from opposite sides, and to overcome the feeling of "being enemies" due to different cultural and ethnical backgrounds. [3]

Centre for Nonviolent Action was founded by Nenad Vukosavljevic, a peace activist from Belgrade, in September 1997, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The organization was started with the support of the German NGO Kurve Wustrow, an educational center for nonviolent actions. Throughout various phases of CNA's work, Berghof Research Centre for Constructive Conflict Management has been offering support in terms of supervision and advice. In 2001, a second office was opened in Belgrade, Serbia. [4]

Tools

In order to achieve their values, CNA implements various tools, including peace education, peacebuilding, publications and video production.

Training

CNA works with various groups including teachers, journalists, activists, social workers, youth workers, and political party activists. [2] Its main target group is young people working for NGOs, political parties and youth organizations, who are able and willing to spread their skills to the community. [4] Since their founding, CNA organized several training programmes.

Basic and advance trainings bring people from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo. Those programs focus on prejudice reduction, mutual trust building and constructive dealing with the past. Training for ex-combatants is organized for soldiers who actively participated in wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia in different armies, and focuses on encouraging dialogues and empowering veterans to participate in peace building. "Mir-Paqe-Мир training" has been held every year since 2015 and pays special attention to understanding the context of Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia. CNA also organizes training for students from Bosnia and Herzegovina, with goal of developing peacebuilding foundations for future generations of public opinion and policy makers. [5]

Work with war veterans

The organization wants to work with war veterans from the 1990s in a "constructive" way. At the beginning of the project, right after the war, the organization was working only with civilians, mostly young people. [6] However, in 2002, war veterans were included as a target group, as part of the project "Dealing with the Past". [4] Many veterans were open to dialog and willing to work on reconciliation. Compared to the young civilians, they had a much greater impact on local media. Over time, the peace activities from CNA involved several groups of veteran associations in the cities across former Yugoslavia, and continued to hold trainings and public meetings. [6]

Documentaries

CNA created a series of movies and documentaries.

Criticism

During the first phase in Serbia in 2002, CNA dealt with some resistance. At one public event, a journalist questioned the credibility of a panel member by emphasizing her past employment in a newspaper that was close to Milosevic's regime. On another occasion, one of the local veteran associations tried to disrupt the panel debate. [4]

Some of the speakers in the first forum held political positions and there was an impression that they tried to use public forums for their agenda. [4]

A few days before a public forum in Sarajevo in 2004, CNA received a phone call from the veteran organization Green Berets, whose members opposed the idea of the forum. A lot of people attending the forum experienced the horrors of the wars and were not willing to address this experience. [4]

Some feedback from panels in Serbia and Bosnia was a necessity to involve people with more nationalist learning and to organize these panels across the wider region. [4]

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gavrilo Princip</span> Bosnian Serb who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Gavrilo Princip was a Bosnian Serb student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie, Duchess von Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The killing of the Archduke and his wife set off the July Crisis, a chain of events that within one month led to the outbreak of World War I.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dayton Agreement</span> 1995 treaty ending the Bosnian War

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement or the Dayton Accords, is the peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, United States, finalised on 21 November 1995, and formally signed in Paris, on 14 December 1995. These accords put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, which was part of the much larger Yugoslav Wars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alija Izetbegović</span> Bosnian politician, lawyer, philosopher and author (1925–2003)

Alija Izetbegović was a Bosnian politician, lawyer, Islamic philosopher and author, who in 1992 became the first president of the Presidency of the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bosnian War</span> 1992–1995 armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The war is commonly seen as having started on 6 April 1992, following a number of earlier violent incidents. The war ended on 14 December 1995 when the Dayton accords were signed. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, and the Republika Srpska, the latter two entities being proto-states led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milorad Dodik</span> Bosnian Serb politician

Milorad Dodik is a Bosnian Serb politician serving as the 8th president of Republika Srpska since 2022. Previously, he served as the 7th Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2018 to 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jovan Divjak</span> Bosnian general (1937–2021)

Jovan Divjak was a Bosnian army general who served as the Deputy Commander of the Bosnian army's main staff until 1994, during the Bosnian War.

ZaMirNET (ForPeaceNET) is a Croatia-based non-governmental organisation working in the field of ICT. It describes itself as "a citizen association dedicated toward civil society development, promoting the culture of peace and the idea of sustainable development in Croatia and the region."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adil Zulfikarpašić</span> Bosnian intellectual and politician

Adil Zulfikarpašić was a Bosnian intellectual and politician who served as vice president of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian War of the 1990s, under the first president of the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Alija Izetbegović. After the war he retired from politics and opened the Bosniak Institute, a museum in Sarajevo focused on the Bosniak culture.

The 1992 Yugoslav People's Army column incident in Tuzla, also known as Tuzla column was an attack on the 92nd Motorized Brigade of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in the Bosnian city of Tuzla on 15 May 1992. The incident occurred at the road junction of Brčanska Malta. At least 54 soldiers of the JNA were killed and 44 wounded during the attacks. What started off as a peaceful retreat by agreement with local authorities ended in an ambush, when Patriotic League, Green Berets and Bosniaks from local police attacked the column. It was a repeat of a similar incident that occurred in Sarajevo a week prior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radovan Karadžić</span> Bosnian Serb politician (born 1945)

Radovan Karadžić is a Bosnian Serb politician who was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He was the president of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al Jazeera Balkans</span> Television channel

Al Jazeera Balkans (AJB) is an international news television station headquartered in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina aimed at the media markets of the countries that used to be constituent units of SFR Yugoslavia. It is part of the Al Jazeera Media Network.

The partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina was discussed and attempted during the 20th century. The issue came to prominence during the Bosnian War, which also involved Bosnia and Herzegovina's largest neighbors, Croatia and Serbia. As of 2023, the country remains one state while internal political divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina based on the 1995 Dayton Agreement remain in place.

The Institute for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding (ICP) is a Swiss non-governmental organization specialized in the promotion of non-violent conflict transformation. Created by Pascal Gemperli and Uri Ziegele in 2007, the organization focuses on promoting conflict transformation and peacebuilding through peace mediation courses and trainings. Its comprehensive approach is based on interdisciplinary practice and research in the areas of international peace and conflict research, critical systems theory, culture and communication studies, political psychology, group psychotherapy and other related fields. The ICP has offices in both Bern and Morges (Switzerland). It is accredited ECOSOC and certified EDUQUA. It is active in the following countries: Switzerland, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Morocco, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1992 anti-war protests in Sarajevo</span> 1992 protests in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

On 5 April 1992, in response to events all over Bosnia and Herzegovina 100,000 people of all nationalities turned out for a peace rally in Sarajevo. Serb Democratic Party (SDS) snipers in the Holiday Inn in the heart of Sarajevo opened fire on the crowd, killing six people and wounding several more. Suada Dilberović and an ethnic Croat woman Olga Sučić were in the first rows, protesting on the Vrbanja bridge at the time. The bridge on which Sučić and Dilberović were killed was later renamed in their honor. Six SDS snipers were arrested, but were exchanged when the SDS threatened to kill the commander of the Bosnian police academy who had been captured the previous day, after the Serb paramilitaries took over the academy and arrested him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Post-Conflict Research Center</span>

The Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) is a Sarajevo-based non-governmental organization, which aims to nurture an enabling environment for sustainable peace and facilitate the restoration of inter-ethnic relationships in Bosnia-Herzegovina. PCRC's expertise consists of innovative multimedia projects and creative educational curricula that engage youth in fostering long-lasting tolerance, mutual understanding, and social activism in the Western Balkans region. The Center’s overall mission is to build a robust network empowering youth with transferable skills and resources to spread an all-encompassing culture of peace among the many ethnic groups composing the country. PCRC’s overall strategy encompasses six core areas of operation: creative multimedia, preventing genocide, mass atrocities & violent extremism, peace education, transitional justice, post-conflict research and consultancy.

Croatian National Council in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a Sarajevo-based NGO and a civic organisation of Bosnian Croats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exodus of Sarajevo Serbs</span> Migration of ethnic Serbs following the end of the Bosnian War

The Exodus of Sarajevo Serbs was the migration of ethnic Serbs from Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, between January and March 1996 after the Dayton Agreement that concluded the Bosnian War (1992–95).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kazani pit killings</span> Mass murder of predominantly ethnic Serbs in besieged Sarajevo

The Kazani pit killings were the mass murder of predominantly ethnic Serbs living inside besieged Sarajevo by the forces of Mušan Topalović, commander of the 10th Mountain Brigade in the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War.

Anarchism in Bosnia and Herzegovina first emerged from left-wing currents of the anti-imperialist movement, gaining traction as a tendency in the revolutionary organization Young Bosnia. Following assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and World War I, Bosnia and Herzegovina was brought under a series of authoritarian regimes, before gaining independence in 1992. In the post-independence climate of rising nationalism and income inequality, anarchism re-emerged as part of the nascent anti-nationalist and anti-capitalist movements of the 21st century.

The Initiative for RECOM, full name Initiative for the establishment of a Regional Commission tasked with establishing the facts about all victims of war crimes and other serious human rights violations committed on the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the period from January 1, 1991, to December 31, 2001, was an initiative to establish a regional commission for truth by agreement between the states of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

References

  1. 1 2 "about CNA Sarajevo Belgrade". CNA. 2011-11-11. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  2. 1 2 "Centre for Nonviolent Action, Balkans - Irénées". www.irenees.net. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  3. ↑ Vukosavljevic, Nenad. Training for Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation. Experiences of the “Centre for Nonviolent Action” in the Western Balkans. Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Fischer, Martina (2006). Peacebuilding and Civil Society in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ten Years After Dayton. LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 387–393.
  5. ↑ "about trainings". CNA. 2011-11-21. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  6. 1 2 Caucaso, Osservatorio Balcani e. "Sarajevo: the road to nonviolence". Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "film | CNA" . Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 "Documentaries by the Center for Nonviolent Action – Learning history that is not yet history" . Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  9. ↑ CNA (2019-12-13). "Centre for Nonviolent Action among the Winners of the Krunoslav Sukić Award |". CNA. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.