UNMIK on AIR

July, 3rd

The Role of Civil Society in fostering the dialogue

(Andrea Saula)

 

 

Adem Demaci: I’m afraid that we, from the civil society, are talking to ourselves. We are trying to impact on people, on the surroundings, in some capillary way. But others have the power to decide how to tackle these problems.

 

Adem Demaci - a man who has never stopped trying to talk. A position that in the past cost him years in jail when Kosovo was still under Belgrade’s control.

 

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A human rights activist, Demaci also sits on the board of directors of Kosovo’s public service broadcaster RTK. He was one of the participants in a conference in Pristina last week organized by the Kosovan Civil Society Foundation and other groups with support from the OSCE Mission in Kosovo.

  

 

The need for dialogue between Pristine and Belgrade was a recurrent theme of the conference, though in a sense this has already begun, at least between people of goodwill on both sides. But the real question remains - the impact of conferences like this and whether they can really kick start dialogue at the political level between Pristina and Belgrade?  Besnik Tahiri, program officer in Democratization department OSCE Mission in Kosovo.

 

Besnik Tahiri: I am sure and I think that the only way to foster the dialogue between Kosova and Serbia is to start in this way, to start from grass root to enhance as much as possible the communication between the citizens, NGOs, different institutions and so on.  We know that the dialog between Pristina and Belgrade has been much politicized and the intention of this conference, the intention of a civil dialogue project is not to touch the political points, it touches mostly the practical cooperation among NGOs, among associations, among citizens and so on, just to see the way how the channel of communication could be improved, how to foster in general democratic developments and the developments of a civil society in Kosovo.

 

Adem Demaci, who remembers all too well the failure of civil society in former Yugoslavia to stop the region from sliding into war after war, is a bit more skeptical.

 

Adem Demaci: We do have a small influence. However we continue to fight because there is no other way. But we tried similar methods even before the war, before these catastrophes, before all these tragic events. We talked in the country and outside the country. We were in Belgrade. But it all ended completely different, because nobody paid attention to the issues we were raising.     

 

Jasmina Tesanovic is a Belgrade based human rights activist with “Women In black”, a group that shot to fame through their consistent opposition to all the wars in former Yugoslavia and to the Milosevic regime. Jasmina feels that relations between grassroots workers from different NGOs are very important and can be of immense benefit.

 

Jasmina Tesanovic: I think that conferences like this can’t advance talks. They are supposed to give information about what’s really going on.  These are field NGOs and I do believe that their work can help a dialogue. For example I came with the NGO “Women in black” to see what do other group do. We are not dealing with nationalities; we want to deal with civil society and emancipation. It is in a way easier to us, because we have a broader picture. We are not dealing with daily politics: whether Kosovo is going to become a state or not. Of course that it is important and that can make a difference between us. But the bottom line is that we need to have dialogue, especially concerning the fight for civil society, for women’ human rights, it means fighting against one’s own men who are leading wars. That is against patriarchy.

 

Jasmina Tesanovic: A lot of people are disappointed. They are saying that everybody is saying the same things as five, six or ten years ago. I have the same feeling. At one point I was horrified, I started to cry. How is it that ten years later, after all what happened, we listen to the same stories? Everybody is talking “pro domine suo”. I don’t know, I’m always on the victim’ s side. Maybe that’s naïve and stupid but I think that’s the only right thing to do. If one wants to help change certain situations one has to be on the side of the weaker ones, whether they are Serbs or Albanians.

 

Formal talks between Pristina and Belgrade will begin sooner rather than later. Politicians may or may not agree on certain political issues, but some processes take a longer time to unfold and resolve themselves. Besnik Tahiri

 

Besnik Tahiri: I think that the reconciliation is a process and reconciliation is not just an event that could happen, the reconciliation is in a process and for reconciliation process should do different activities starting from interethnic dialog continued with facilitation of a dialog between grass roots citizens and so on.

 

Leon Malazogu who works with the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development has long been involved in informal meetings between Albanian and Serbian politicians. He says that dialogue will start soon, civil society could play an important role in preparing the ground.

 

Leon Malazogu: I think technical talks will start, lets say, are likely to start in late September or October. Because you have summer holidays; we are not prepared, this thing came too quickly. So, still the public opinion has to get prepared a little bit more.

 

The conference ended with an ambitious agenda to prepare public opinion on both sides  - hopefully the follow-up to the conference will get more media attention than the Prishtina meeting did. That’s it for this edition of UNMIK ON AIR. Thanks for listening.