History Textbooks in Post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina

In this paper we study the history textbooks that are being used in primary and grammar schools in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis is based on the findings of empirical research carried out in the period 1997-1999. The results of this research indicate that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, although it is a single country, three kinds of history textbooks have been in use. These textbooks reflect the ethnic division into three distinct ethnic entities: the Bosniac, Croatian and Serbian entities. Each has its own, ethnically oriented, textbooks. Contributing more to the creation of a closed, ethnocentric identity than to an identity open to diversity, these textbooks serve more as a disintegrative than integrative factor in the post-war reconstruction period that has characterised social life in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Therefore, radical changes are needed in terms of curricula harmonisation, as well as the development of content appropriate materials for the education of Bosnia's youth so that it can fully participate in a democratic and pluralistic society.     

Participatory Action Research with Youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina

SUMMARY

Sparked by a global UNICEF initiative, Bosnia and Herzegovina launched a participatory action research process in which 75 young people in three towns explored local understandings, needs, and actions about HIV/AIDS, drug use, human rights, and other issues. This article chronicles the research process, the action recommendations generated by young people, and the current status of the project. It reflects on the commitments and efforts which are required when large, adult-directed organizations decide to promote youth participation, and on the institutional changes necessary to support sustained youth participation that benefits ordinary youth rather than a selected few.     

Gendering the Bone: The Politics of Memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina1

This article explores and intervenes in the deadlock produced by the identifications of bodily remains resulting from genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Every day, in that country, bodily remains are exhumed, counted, reassociated, managed and consecrated as ethnic remains. This is done through the strategic collaboration of forensic science; multiculturalist post‐conflict management, with its politics of reconciliation; and religious ritual — an uncouth alliance between the scientist, the bureaucrat and the priest. In doing so, the scientist, the bureaucrat and the priest assume the perspective of the perpetrator of the crime. For it is in the fantasy of the perpetrator that the executed person is an ethnic other. The article intervenes by posing the question: what different praxis could deactivate the reification of bones as ethnic victims, would stop the prolongation of the injurious gaze of the perpetrator and would return the bones to common use through which we can contemplate hope after genocide? In other words, what is the politics that will enable us to be hopeful subjects in relation to these bones? Drawing on cultural production in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the article both challenges and goes beyond current mainstream political choices. Thus, it identifies and strengthens hopeful politics in cultural‐as‐political practices that productively bear witness to the precariousness of life. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is mainly women artists who harness traumatic events and the loss of the past and present in order to announce a more hopeful politics. What this hopeful politics after genocide is, through what praxis is it enacted, and by which subjects are the main concerns of this article.     

Housing and Property Restitution and IDP Return in Kosovo1

La création de la Direction des logements et des biens (DLB) et de la Commission des demandes de dédommagement (CDD) au Kosovo reflète un intérêt croissant de la part de la communauté internationale pour le rétablissement des droits sur les logements et les biens au lendemain du conflit. En quelque trois années de fonctionnement, ces institutions ont réussi àétablir les droits de propriété concernant la quasi-totalité des 30.000 habitations dont la propriétéétait contestée. La DLB et la CDD font aujourd'hui figure d'exemple pour de nombreuses autres régions ayant traversé une période de conflit. Si l'efficacité de ces institutions est louable, l'un des objectifs initiaux essentiels - le retour des personnes déplacées dans leur lieu d'origine - a dans une large mesure été laissé de côté. L'auteur met surtout l'accent sur deux échecs distincts de la communauté internationale concernant le fonctionnement de la DLB/CDD et de leurs effets possibles sur les retours: un manque de coordination entre les deux institutions d'une part et les autres organismes œuvrant dans le domaine des retours d'autre part, et l'isolement des décisions concernant le droit à la propriété par rapport à d'autres aspects d'une culture de respect du droit à la propriété au Kosovo.     

Refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina in Serbia: A Study of Refugee Selectivity

This paper examines selectivity of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina in Serbia with respect to certain demographic and socio‐economic structures. Analyses indicated that the demographic and socio‐economic characteristics of these refugees are significantly more favourable than those of other refugees in Serbia and those in the place of origin. The results show that refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina who, because of war, have sought refuge in Serbia are positively selective compared to the population that moved shorter distances (i.e. within the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina) for the same reason. Their educational level and participation in the Belgrade workforce, the main urban and functional centre and pole of demographic concentration, support the hypothesis that despite the forced nature of their migration, movement to Serbia as a destination rather than migration within Bosnia and Herzegovina was partly determined by economic factors in keeping with the structural characteristics of the refugees. The directions of recent refugee migrations from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serbia have continued the historic trend of previous migrations on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. To be specific, the centres with the highest concentrations of recent refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina are precisely those municipalities with the greatest number of persons who migrated from Bosnia and Herzegovina before 1991.     

Mainstreaming community based rehabilitation in primary health care in Bosnia‐Herzegovina

There are over 600 million disabled people and over 20% of the world population is impacted by disability. However, the strategies for including disabled people in the process of reform of developing countries have been rarely considered. The paucity of research is striking. Mainstreaming Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) in Bosnia‐Herzegovina is one example where the needs of disabled people were a development priority and research was conducted to evaluate this experience. The research demonstrated that unlike the pre‐war environment, disabled people are increasingly active members of the community. The significance is that the needs of disabled people were ‘targeted’ and CBR was ‘mainstreamed’ in the primary health care system creating opportunities for sustained development. CBR is contributing to the citizenship of disabled people. This partnership project set the stage for the continued development of disability policies. These are important lessons.     

Practices of border crossing in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina: the case of Mostar

In this article, I bring together literature from the fields of memory and reconciliation to investigate practices of ‘border crossing’ in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. While national divisions prevail, subtle attempts at border crossing can be witnessed even in those areas most impacted by the war’s partition, such as in Mostar, a city that has been left divided into Croat and Bosniak sides. Borders are physically crossed to reintegrate the ‘other side’ into one’s everyday life, but also in a more metonymical sense through the questioning of absolute national identities. Such acts of border crossing heavily rely on memories of positive pre-war cross-national relations, which are brought forward to re-establish these relations in post-war times. The research findings suggest that re-enacting a shared common ground – most often found in the past rather than in the present – bears an integrative potential that deserves more attention in post-conflict settings.     

NGOs and the Development of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Understanding Large-Scale Interorganizational Systems

Relief efforts resulting from the $5 billion Priority Reconstruction Program, launched as part of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, attracted nearly 500 nonprofit organizations to the small, newly independent nation of Bosnia. Donor resources and recipient needs changed over time forcing constant adjustment in this environment, at times resulting in service overlap, inefficiency, and waste. However, the inter-relatedness of tasks in this war-torn country continually reminded players of the need for cooperative, coordinated action. Within a short time, intricate webs of interorganizational relationships emerged among donors, NGO implementers, and host nation players, at both ground and global levels. The research reported here is based on extensive interview material with a diverse range of informants.     

The right to intercultural education: students’ perspectives on schooling and opportunities for reconciliation through multicultural engagement in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

In post-conflict societies, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, education is recognised as a key factor in reconciliation. Yet the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement set in process arrangements that mean that Bosnia and Herzegovina’s three constituent ethnic groups (Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs) are educated separately. This paper examines students’ right to integrated schooling and an intercultural education, in keeping with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It reports on small-scale empirical research on the impact of integrated and segregated education on students, focusing on the experiences of students who have had access to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s only fully integrated school. There are tensions between the competing educational rights of students and the cultural rights of ethno-cultural communities. Since entrenched political problems hinder the reestablishment of integrated public schooling, the paper considers the potential of service-learning and multicultural community engagement to challenge ethno-nationalist ideas promoted through segregated schools and enable peace and reconciliation.     

Daring ‘life‐return projects’ to post‐Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article discusses the prospects for realization of rights‐based return against the backdrop of a twenty years‐long (inter)nationally managed return process to post‐Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. It draws on 42 in‐depth interviews with two different waves of returnees: early assisted returns (1997‐2005), and later self‐organised returns (2005‐2013). Our findings show that realization of return implicates the courageous well‐planned and self‐orchestrated life return projects, closely inter‐linked with the construction of the complex micro‐social structures buffering against the unpredictable macro‐social context of post‐Dayton BiH. Instead of being propelled by formal and assisted return programmes, it is rather the intricate relational practices with space(s) and people – continuously investing in the multisite local and transnational social networks, and flexible mobility and settlement patterns ‐ shaped by social agency of the returnees that lead to realization of the return projects.     

Interrogating the Relationship between Remigration and Sustainable Return

Assisted voluntary return is a central component of many countries managed migration policies. Within these programmes achieving a sustainable return is a common policy goal, which is often measured through remigration. In this paper, it is argued that remigration is not a valid indicator to measure sustainable return. A new definition and approach to defining and measuring sustainable return is presented based on a multidimensional return and reintegration index, which is tested with a sample of 118 returnees in six countries. Due to small sample size a chi‐square test is used to examine the correlation between the return and reintegration index and remigration intentions. The results demonstrate the relationship between having a concrete remigration plan and the return and reintegration index is insignificant. This relationship between remigration and sustainable return is further interrogated throughout the paper.     

The Right to Return in China

The right to return has been affirmed as a fundamental human right in several international instruments. While being a fundamental human right, each state has the sovereign right to regulate the right to return in accordance with its own laws. The regulation of the right to return, however, is not only an attribute of sovereignty but an issue with important political, economic and security implications for the state. Given its significance, it is understandable and desirable that states regulate the right to return. The regulation must however take account of both the interests of the state and the human rights dimension of the right. A careful and well-coordinated returning strategy with a well-defined the right to return focus could enhance China's economic progress as well as its international human rights image.
China's current policies on the right to return still reflect a closed culture. Few among the 5 million Huaqiao lodge applications to return to China for permanent residence or employment. Eleven million illegal migrants have difficulty meeting the impracticable requirements of passport re-issue, replacement and extension. The Chinese government's behaviour in imposing limitations on citizens from returning to China is unacceptable. China may have some justifications for its restrictive approach, but on balance, has more to gain from adopting a more liberal approach. The issue of the right to return in China is crucial both for the future of China, and for development of the right to return in the world.     

Connecting Tenure Security with Durable Solutions to Internal Displacement: From Restitution of Property Rights to the Right to Adequate Housing

The end of displacement is a main goal of international peacebuilding strategies, with increasing financial and human resources committed to it. Nevertheless, protracted internal displacement remains unabated, necessitating a review of the responses provided thus far. Durable solutions to internal displacement require a safe, permanent and secure place to settle, which puts security of tenure at the centre of any sustainable option. This article emphasizes the limited understanding of the factors that contribute to secure tenure as one of the main flaws in a predominantly legal approach to the right to restitution and the right to adequate housing in responses to internal displacement. It calls for the design of contextualized and inclusive strategies to align the de jure, de facto and perception dimensions of tenure security to support the sustainable settlement of internally displaced persons as well as the construction of peace.     

Shame,Realisation and Restitution: The Ethics of Restorative Practice

In this article, I want to highlight the ethics of restorative practice in therapeutic intervention with men who have abused family members. The term restorative action is commonly evoked in the aftermath of abuse, especially in the context of attempts to re‐establish respectful relationships between family members. I will critique popular ideas concerning remorse, forgiveness, pardoning and reconciliation, and pose possibilities for ethical practices of restorative action.     

Divorce and a Return to School

A return to school is discussed as both a possible contributing factor to marital separation or divorce as well as an outcome. Resuming work or education may produce role conflict within a marital relationship. A return to school may also follow a divorce in cases where a woman needs to obtain training necessary to support herself or her family. The special problems and counseling needs of the divorced reentering student are also delineated. Implications for society and education include the institutionalization of "maintenance" funds for reeducation and the removal of the many obstacles to part-time study faced by the divorced returning adult.