WE LIVE A NEGATIVE PEACE!

Two major wars rage on in the world – one in Ukraine and the other in the Middle East, while a third, between India and Pakistan, is looming. The regions of the former Yugoslavia have been in turmoil for years. Serbia aligns itself with Moscow, while Dodik in Bosnia and Herzegovina openly rejects the institutions of the state to which he belongs.

Young people are watching all of this unfold, and they are not happy. They know that they cannot influence global events, but in Serbia they are determined to change something. The participants of the PERSPEKTIVA show share similar views on crises and wars, regardless of where they comefrom. Petar from Serbia, Redžep from Kosovo, and Jelena from Bosnia and Herzegovina all express similar sentiments.

I want this country to take responsibility for what it has done. I am ashamed, and that’s one of the reasons I don’t want to be a citizen of this country – because of the wrongs it has committed. Once we start acknowledging this, I will feel some of relief.

https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-beograd-20-02-22/31712505.html

I think that we haven’t confronted the past, which means the healing process can’t begin.

https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-kosovo-mladi-zene-drustvo/32724242.html

I feel like we are still living in the time of time of Domanović’s branding of foreheads, as part of some religious flock, or just signatures on a politician’s list. They keep telling us to ‘open our eyes,’ but I think our eyes only see what they can. What we’ve seen in the past was far from good. What we see now is limited, and the only color we see in that narrow tunnel is black. I think it’s time we start opening our hearts. The truth resides there. Each of us carries a piece of that truth. If our truths start coming together – even just among my peers, and I believe they are already doing so – we could stand on these planks, and that blackness would be beneath us, and we would stop focusing on the labels they’ve assigned us, and we would realize we have the right to reject them.

https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-banja-luka-mladi/31526912.html

Mila from Novi Sad believes it is the responsibility of young people to learn from past conflicts to prevent their repetition. Ania from Tirana notes that people have simply become worn out by life. Adnan points out that the war continues, albeit through different methods.

Our only responsibility regarding the 1990s Yugoslav wars is to learn from them. If we don’t, we risk repeating them.

https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/32411065.html

If I had to sum up how war is perceived in Tirana, Albania, and the rest of the Balkans, that word would be ‘silence.’ People refuse to talk about it. They’re tired of the stories and the reality of life in post-war countries.

https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-sff-proslost-suocavanje/32017860.html

This is war, at least that’s how I see it. We’re living in a state of war right now. There are no weapons, but all other methods of warfare are in play. My generation, I feel, has been robbed of its youth simply because we were born here, and because my parents decided to stay here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9p1xwnIKus&t=1s

Jelena from Banjaluka believes the root cause lies in the fact that identity has been, wrongly, reduced to national affiliation.

People who emphasize national identity as their primary label are often doing so because they lack the ability, capacity, desire, strength or the will to achieve anything else. By clinging to labels tied to a specific ethnicity, they define themselves through their nationality. This how we create ideologies and groupings based on unhealthy foundations. And unhealthy foundations cannot give birth to anything good. Therefore, prejudices emerge from this lack of education, resulting in the inability to view issues from multiple perspectives. What results is a one-dimensional picture that cannot lead to any resolution or understanding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP7-gqkqSyM

Anja from Srebrenica emphasizes that we live in negative peace.

By definition, negative peace is the mere absence of war. Positive peace, however, is a broader concept. It goes beyond the absence of violence and does not only refer to the fact that there is no shooting, but instead encompasses a political and economic context that allows us to feel safe and secure.