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| July 7th - The Forgotten Youth of Bosnia: Building Trust and Hope a Decade On |
| "Funding for our youth project is increasingly difficult
in Bosnia. More and more money is going to other countries in the
region", said Nina, one project leader from a Mostar-based NGO called
Mladi Most (meaning 'New Bridge'). It is disturbing to think that
people's traumas can be 'fashionable'. Even more disturbing is that
when their cause becomes 'last season' their trauma almost certainly
has not. |
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| Mostar, meaning 'Old Bridge', was destroyed during the
war. Here Its namesake is being reconstructed |
Almost a hundred Peace Boat participants traversed
the border from the Croatian port town of Dubrovnik into Bosnia to
visit the war-torn city of Mostar. Here we visited two NGO projects,
which demonstrated the gulf between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'
of project funding in Bosnia six years after the Dayton Agreement
that brought to a close the war that racked the people of this city.
The London-based War Child project was set up to help the traumatised youth of Bosnia at the end of the Bosnian war. It drew celebrities such as Oasis, Bjork, Brian Eno and many more. This project together with another big man of music, Luciano Pavarotti, set up a Music centre in Mostar, the city most ravaged by war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The well-funded Pavarotti Music Centre comprises a music therapy department, the first in the former Yugoslavia for special needs children, an outreach project to primary schools and the best equipped recording studio in South-Eastern Europe. This centre has a secondary, but equally essential function. It provides the entertainment-starved youth of Mostar a channel to express themselves in a "creative playground for the mind", said the centre's director. These playgrounds range from DJ workshops and dance groups to classical and brass band ensembles. |
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| A street with no name |
From this example of a project success story, which continues to attract funding and attention, we walked through Mostar's old town to another brand of youth project - one which is now only on a financial drip-feed after most of the international aid has moved on to more in vogue locations. 'Mostar' literally means 'Old Bridge', its namesake being an ancient footbridge in the Muslim Quarter spanning the river Neretva. This bridge was destroyed by Croat forces for no apparent strategic purpose. The result however was to totally demoralise the Muslim community, the bridge being a symbol of pride for them. Today the bridge is being painstakingly reconstructed. From the old town we walked north along a central street of the old town. The apartment blocks and houses flanking the road offer no shelter and are vacant except for the thriving vegetation. Graffiti inscribed on the crumbling walls laments the savagery of the 'varvari', or barbarians, of both sides who brought about such destruction. |
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| Nina, a committee member from Mladi Most |
Mladi Most, which can be translated as new or young bridge, was founded in 1994 as a youth centre. The 'young bridge' in the name of the organisation refers to the new links being forged between youth from different ethnic communities. The NGO was later restructured and is lead by a ten-person consensus decision-making committee with a focus on long-term projects. These include a womens' group, a photography and film project and a non-violent communication project. "Many of the young here feel hopeless, seven in ten want to leave Bosnia as soon as possible", said Nina, adding that the centre tries to avoid politics while building on personal stories through games and exercises. "I don't believe in arguments and facts, I [just] try to create an atmosphere where young people feel safe to talk about what they want". The projects seek individual sources of funds with the non-violent communication project, typically, being the project with encounters most funding difficulties. |
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| In a country where the government cannot or will not provide similar projects to these and "government money is being diverted away from the people", according to one Mladi Most committee member, these local projects are doubly important. Without international funding for projects like Mladi Most they will simply disappear and the young people of Mostar may well remain "understandably traumatised while finding it difficult to trust their neighbours". This sounds like fertile soil for the re-ignition of conflict. |
| Written by Duncan Trevan |
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| This week at
sea |
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PEACE BOAT is an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. |
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