While regional politicians are increasingly embracing nationalist rhetoric and deepening divisions, young people from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia are takin a different approach - one based on daily collaboration, solidarity, and learning.
Despite the divisions, war narratives and burdens of the 1990s, young people in the region are finding ways to build bridges and create common spaces to build a better society.
Paying respect to victims of war crimes, regardless of ethnicity or nationality, and acknowledging established facts about the conflicts of the 1990s is crucial for building coexistence, tolerance, and peace in the Western Balkans.
Young people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro have gathered this month for the two-week Youth Academy “State of Peace,” organized by the European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in cooperation with the Post-Conflict Research Center.
Religious leaders from four different religions—located within just 400 meters of one another in Sarajevo, often called the "European Jerusalem"—delivered a unified message to participants of the youth academy “State of Peace” - that peace can only be built together.