Nansen Dialogue started its work in 1995, following a spontaneous idea of Inge Eidsvaag, tells Ingrid Vik, right, the network’s current Director. -Visiting Sarajevo, an Olympic city like Lillehammer – but under siege ten years after it hosted the Olympics – he came to the idea of organising courses in democracy, human rights and peaceful conflict resolution for participants from the former Yugoslavia with different backgrounds, in neutral surroundings at the Nansen Academy. (16-DEC-05)
The first course was realised in 1995 with the financial support of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has also supported the work ever since. New groups continued to come in 1996 and 1997.
-A combination of local ownership and Nansen?s timeless ideology
-The next phase of the project, continues Vik, -consisted of exporting the dialogue courses to the field, with more focus on follow up of participants in order to ensure sustainable effects. This became possible as one slowly developed an alumnus of earlier Lillehammer participants as local resource persons. To begin with, only individual seminars and activities were being held; however, one soon realised the need to systematise the work and anchor it with organisations, and by 2001, eight Nansen Dialogue Centres had been established; in Belgrade, Skopje, Montenegro, Kosovo, Mostar, Sarajevo, Banjaluka and Osijek. The Centres are local NGOs, functioning together as a network while spreading dialogue as a tool for conflict resolution in their local environments, with primary focus on interethnic relations in local institutions such as schools and municipalities. The Network currently has around 60 full time employees in the field. All of them are locals who have undergone the training at Lillehammer, hence securing local ownership as well as the presence of the Nansen ideology in the work.
-Still an important role to play
-The Lillehammer course has also continued, Vik further explains, -and by now, more than 40 groups with more than 600 individuals have undergone it. It should be mentioned that the course has over time adopted a narrower substantive focus, functioning as a more tailor-made supplement to the projects of the Nansen Centres and their beneficiaries. After 10 years of work, one has obtained a wide range of experience, of which some has been documented in the Network’s publication “Dialogue – more than wordsâ€, a collection of essays written by individuals that have in different ways been connected to the Network. One has also experimented with applying the Nansen Dialogue concept to other conflict situations, specifically in Somalia and in the Middle East, with promising results. Although ex-Yugoslavia is about to become yesterday’s news, one needs to realise that reconciliation work is essential also after the guns have silenced, and that it requires time. The riots in Kosovo in March 2004 clearly demonstrated that there is still a long way to go to political stability in the region. Hence, there is no doubt that the Nansen Dialogue Network has an important role to play in the Western Balkans also in the years to come.
