Jane (far left) with members of the WCIA and CPOS. Photo: Courtesy of Jane Harries.
Committed candidates: Jane Harries visits the Centre for Peace Studies in Zagreb
‘Reconciliation can only take place amid true understanding and acknowledgement of the past.’
At the end of 2024, two of us from the Welsh Centre for International Affairs (WCIA) set off on a five-day educational visit to Croatia. It was a joint project with the Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) in Zagreb. As a Quaker, and as the peace education manager at the WCIA, I was intrigued by CPS – by what it is doing to develop peace education and activism in Croatia, and by what we could learn from it.
My curiosity came out of longstanding work to develop and promote peace education in Wales and beyond. There is an increasing realisation in the peace movement that we need to talk more about what we actually mean by peace and nonviolence, and their significance for society more widely. We are also increasingly aware of the importance of building a culture of peace from the grassroots upwards.
We met with Lana and Iva of the CPS over coffee in their office. Our conversation was squeezed between interviews of prospective candidates for their 2025 Peace Studies course. CPS runs a six-month hybrid course for ‘active citizens who want to be committed to human rights protection and promotion [and] active nonviolence through understanding and transforming conflicts in society’. The course is non-formal, with participants coming from a variety of backgrounds (teachers, journalists, lawyers, and people working or volunteering for NGOs), from across Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The common denominator is that candidates have to be committed to using the skills and knowledge they acquire to bring about change in their own contexts – for instance to oppose racism, deal with structural violence, or promote equality, diversity and inclusion.
Lana and Iva were clear that the course is not attractive to funders, but they had decided not to change it for funding purposes. Students pay €150 to take part (€300 if they can), but some ‘pay back’ through volunteering. But the course is not just about supporting students to acquire knowledge and skills. Students go on to form a network, and are regularly updated about protests and campaigns. CPS runs impact surveys with past students every few years to ask if they are still using what they have learned in their work, and they get a response rate of over thirty per cent.
CPS has begun to work with other organisations to advocate for peace education – to give it a place in formal education, emphasising the values and methodologies it can help develop. CPS was also involved in the production of a policy paper, published by the Solidar Foundation, lobbying EU governments on the importance of developing peace education in schools.
Several organisations share the building where the CPS is based. Our most memorable meeting was with Vesna from Documenta. This organisation was founded to encourage one important process in dealing with the past: establishing factual truth about war and war-related events in the period between 1941 and 2000. Otherwise, silence and falsification of information about war crimes prevail. Holocaust sites, for example, dating back to the fascist genocide which took place at the end of world war two, are not protected by the Croatian government. This is courageous and painstaking work, rooted in an understanding that real peace and reconciliation can only take place amid true understanding and acknowledgement of the past.
This theme was taken up the following day during our visit to the British Embassy in Zagreb, where Andreas Capstack, the first secretary, talked about a ‘collective amnesia’ in Croatian society about what really happened during the Balkan war. He has organised visits to Northern Ireland for young people from Croatia, so that they can learn how people there are trying to heal divisions after the Troubles.
‘We need to talk more about what we mean by peace and nonviolence.’
Osijek is situated in the east of Croatia, close to the borders with Serbia and Hungary. Twenty years after the end of the war, it is still a fragmented community. We heard how students in towns like Osijek and Vukovar are educated in either Serbian or Croatian classes, and don’t get to meet one another at all during the day. We met three organisations working to build an inclusive civic society based on human rights, nonviolence and participation.
The encounter that made the greatest impact on us was with Katarina Kruhonja, one of the founders of the Centre for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights, an organisation set up in the midst of war, when many were bent on revenge. This was brave and pioneering work: staff received death threats because they provided protective presence for people threatened with eviction from their homes. Katarina is clear about the vital connection between human rights and peace: ‘You say stop with one hand,’ she said, ‘but you have the other hand free to shake hands.’
Katerina has worked to empower teachers who were displaced under Serbian control to deal with trauma and reintegrate peacefully. Since then she has established a set of peace awards for schools. These schools now form a network, and a five-day training course entitled ‘Conflict as an Opportunity’ is offered to teachers.
Xenia, who teaches at an economics school in Vukovar, explained to us the work she has done through informal (extra-curricular) education to bring students from the Serbian and Croatian classes together. The aim is to build trust and cooperation, largely through sports and music. She has started to teach human rights, which has proved to be very popular with her students.
Back in Zagreb we met with Branimira Penić of the Good Schools Initiative. This organisation involves young people in non-formal activities around debating, critical thinking, and participation. Branimira highlighted some of the challenges. Young people in Croatia are becoming polarised into left- and right-wing groups, and are isolated in small bubbles where ‘the other’ is seen as the enemy. Most young people don’t believe that they can change anything, or that people will listen. This in a situation where people don’t learn about the past. Reflecting on the need for good history teachers in Croatia, Branimira said: ‘We are playing at war because we forgot what the consequences of war are.’
During the visit we learned how peace can be promoted in a variety of ways, and the importance of training and of human rights as a basis for a peaceful society. The context is different in the UK, but we share some common concerns. In a society where war is promoted as a solution, how can we raise the profile of peacebuilding as a genuine alternative for a more just, peaceful and sustainable world?
