“14 years of tough and tenacious work in the most traumatized communities have shown that even bitter and hateful enemies can reconcile, come together and live side by side: Internally displaced persons return, houses rebuilt, and ethnically mixed schools and villages resurgence,” the award committee explains.
At the award ceremony in Copenhagen Steinar Bryn used his acceptance speech to thank all his colleagues in Norway and the Balkans. The Nansen Dialogue Network consists of the Nansen Academy in Lillehammer, Norway, as well as Nansen Dialogue Centers in Skopje, Belgrade, Pristina, Osijek, Sarajevo and Mostar. Although the centers are based in cities, the actual reconciliation work is conducted in war-torn and traumatized local communities spread throughout the region. For example, reconciliation projects are underway in Bratunac, Srebrenica, Stolac, Prijedor, Vukovar, Bujanovac, Kosovo Polje, Obilic, and Jegunovce, to name a few. One recent success story was the opening of the first multiethnic high school, “Nansen”, in Jegunovce, Macedonia. Bryn emphasized that the opening of the school is a strong message to Europe: “We are all struggling with the issue of integration, if Macedonians and Albanians who were fighting a few years ago succeed- why is integration such a huge challenge in Denmark and Norway?”
The new Nansen high school in Jegunovce, Macedonia. Photo: Royal Norwegian Embassy, SkopjeThe Nansen Dialogue centers in Bosnia and Herzegovina are located in Sarajevo and Mostar. Working with local communities which were highly effected by the 1992-1995 war, the centers are focusing on breaking down enemy images and building respect for democratic principles and human rights. Both in Sarajevo and Mostar the Nansen Centers have focused on inter-ethnical cooperation in elementary schools, and this has led to several similiar projects in neighboring communities.
When awarded the LIVIA-prize, Steinar Bryn expressed his gratitude to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their economic support and good cooperation with the Nansen Dialogue Network throughout these years. According to Bryn, reconciliation is a long term political process, and he challenged all the European Ministries of Foreign Affairs to focus more on this type of work. Bryn underlined the importance of dialogue in post-conflict societies: “Dialogue is movement. Dialogue is reaching out – the dialogical truth is often found on the bridge between parties in conflict.”