CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VIII (1) ContemporaryEurasia81 | Page 123
BEATA BOEHM
institutions, engineering bureaus, physicians, community representatives,
international NGOs and local social workers. Prior to the meeting, all
participants had received the contents of the agenda, but had not been
informed that the UN expected a multi-ethnic and cooperative effort. This
resulted in a situation that the Croatian leader of the Red Cross in Pakrac
refused to take a seat at a negotiating table where Serbian planning engineers
were seated.
As a consequence, future attention had to be given to select suitable
partners for project development and to identify persons within existing local
networks who met the following criteria:
- the person had not personally experienced traumatic events in the
earlier fighting, since otherwise project discussions would be
encumbered by the mourning of persons reliving traumatic
experiences
- the person was prepared to respect other ethnic groups
- the person showed personal interest in social responsibility
Only after all these criteria had been met, the person´s professional
competence had been assessed.
In the course of the project’s implementation, particular emphasis was
placed on informing local decision makers and project participants (for
example, people receiving loans) that the project in question assists Serbs
and Croats equally on both sides of the ceasefire line. Since direct
cooperation, communication and joint actions were impossible due to the
physical and political separation within the Sector, special importance was
given to positively motivating people with regards to conflict transformation.
The necessity for redesign efforts throughout the entire project period
led to significant delays. This resulted in unfunded cost increases due to
higher staff expenses and to the loss of project resources. For example, due
to the strictly regulated financial guidelines of UNHCR, only a fraction of
the resources that had been allocated to the small business project could be
deployed at the end of 1993 because of year-end and budgetary restrictions.
Concluding remarks
In summary, the project did not achieve its goal of normalizing inter-
ethnic relationships between the conflict parties according to the Vance Plan.
The Plan’s goals had been unrealistically high, especially with respect to the:
- timeframe of the UN mandate
- potential of projects to transform conflict situations
- providing resources such as experts, funding and know-how
The project’s transformative impact on the conflict at hand was
limited. Nevertheless, it helped counteract a process of isolation on both
sides, something difficult to measure in quantitative terms, as well as to
normalize the lives of war-traumatized people in the region.
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