INTERVIEW: Saso Stojkovski, Nansen Dialogue Centre

We promote a dialogue for non-violent conflict resolution

The dialogue is one of the tools for non-violent conflict resolution promoted by the NDC Skopje in its activities. In each of its activities it involves representatives of the ethnic communities in Macedonia, sex and territory representation, says Saso Stojkovski.
Saso Stojkovski is a graduated Defense and Protection professor and a postgraduate student at the “Balkans’ Peace Center”. He has started his working experience in the Balkans’ Peace Center where he has been working as a secretary for a year, and at the same time he is an assistant of the UNESCO project – Peace Culture.

He is one of the founders of the Nansen Dialogue Centre in Skopje in 1999, where he works as a project coordinator of the young politicians program. 

C.W. – What is the Nansen Dialogue Centre? What kind of organization is it and what is its mission? How was it found and who by?
S.S. – The Nansen Dialogue Centre Skopje is a non-governmental organization, a part of the “Balkans Dialogue Project” of the Nansen Academy in Lillehammer and the Peace Research Institute in Oslo. Within the project, since 1999, nine offices have been opened (Skopje, Prishtina, Mitrovica, Belgrade, Podgorica, Mostar, Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Osijek) which simultaneously comprise the Nansen network at the Balkans and the financial support is provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Norway.

The Nansen Dialogue Centre officially started working in January 2000 with the program called A Peace Building Program which comprises three sub-programs: young politicians, high-school pupils and cooperation with non-governmental organizations.

NDC Skopje employs four project coordinators, an assistant, an accountant and an administrator to realize its program.

The NDC Skopje mission is based on the following: civic society development support by stimulating the processes of dialogue between individuals and social groups in the society; promoting the values of peace and non-violent conflict resolution; support and strengthening the inter-cultural exchange between the various cultural communities that live in Macedonia; building a network of activists for support and realization of the NDC Skopje activities.

 

C.W. – Obviously “dialogue” is a key word, contained also in the name of the Centre. What kind of dialogue are you engaged in?
S.S. – The dialogue is one of the tools for non-violent conflict resolution promoted by the NDC Skopje in its activities. In each of its activities we take into consideration to involve representatives of the ethnic communities in Macedonia, sex and territory representation, and the size of the group and the duration of the activity normally depend on the financial possibilities and the optimal conditions for working with a group.

In order to get a session of constructive dialogue, it is necessary to meet some conditions which take some time, as: eliminating the distorted perceptions for each other, stereotypes and prejudices; decreasing the emotions...

By building the communication skills: confidence, honesty, empathy, understanding, body language, role-play, self-criticism, critical consideration, we can expect a process of good dialogue. We should not neglect the (party) attitudes, too, the environment where we live, tradition, culture, that influence the process itself.

It takes some time to achieve all this, depending on the target group you work with, the skills that the facilitator has and the way and methods he/she works with.

I can freely say that we put an accent on socialization after the sessions or on the lectures to which the western lecturers pay a lot of attention to, and it turned out to be very effective.  

C.W. – What do these activities result in?
S.S. – The results are always different, depending on how much the individual itself is ready to accept and apply what has been discussed in the workshops, the ability to accept facts, arguments, attitudes and opinions by someone else and improving critical thinking by building personal attitudes for a certain issue.

I could present some more concrete results from the program for young politicians that I work on, where after the dialogue sessions on the most sensitive issues, as the armed conflict in Macedonia and the Ohrid agreement, their responses and comments, in the evaluations that we submit after each realized activity, it says: positive changes, new facts, skills, way of thinking...

One of the visual results is continuation of cooperation and self-initiative for socializing after the activity ends, regardless of the ethnic and party background.

C.W. – What are some of the more important projects carried out by the Nansen Dialogue Centre?
S.S. – For the so far four-year work NDC Skopje has realized more than 80 seminars, several tribunes, concerts, excursions etc. I would mention “School for young politicians”, “Managing development course” and “NGO Parliament”.

The project “School for young politicians” is a NDC Skopje activity that started being realized this year and 20+20 participants from 9 political parties in Macedonia have taken part in it. The school has been organized twice this year for 18 days. Professors from the Faculties of Law and Economics have taken part in it, foreign professors, journalists-trainers, as well as other local trainers. It has comprised topics from the field of economy, law, EU and UN, dialogue and identity, non-violent conflict resolution and media relations training programs. In the second part (September-October) guests-lecturers were Radmila Sekerinska, Vasil Tupurkovski, Abdulmenaf Bedzeti, the Norwegian Ambassador, representatives of the EU Commission in Macedonia etc.

The goal of this project is acquiring new knowledge and skills from the fields of the above-mentioned topics, improving the inter-parties cooperation and transferring knowledge in their parties through informal education of young politicians. From the group we recruit a part of the participants who show interest for a certain subject and with additional training they become trainers and work on realization of the NDC Skopje programme.

For the following year we are increasing the activities in this sub-programme and we are planning to realize some additional regional schools for young politicians in Macedonia and Norway.

In context of this project I would like to add that we have prepared workshops with some of the participants in the school “Training for managers of electoral process” where they are engaged as trainers.

C.W. – The Nansen Dialogue Centre, following the life credo of the man it was named by, promotes ideas for peace, tolerance, respecting human rights. How successful can it be in a society such as the Macedonian nowadays?
S.S. – If we take into consideration the number of people and organizations in Macedonia dealing professionally with these issues in comparison to the western countries, we are far from what is necessary in the Macedonian society. From a general point of view, most of this kind of education is carried out by a small part of non-governmental organizations, some of it at certain faculties and the international organizations. In contrast to the west, issues as peace as a value, peaceful conflict resolution, human rights, tolerance, overcoming differences, communication skills, European Union...you can see them in kindergartens or institutes or faculties. A very important factor that we must not forget is the economic situation in the country and state investing in non-formal quality education. According to the so far facts, this kind of education on the above mentioned subjects are mostly realized by foreign financial support. And politics is the third factor. I cannot say if a great number of politicized citizens is good or bad for a society, but I claim that the behavior and the statements of the leaders of the political parties has a big influence on creating a positive or a negative political, security and social climate in the country, thus directly influencing not only the NDC Skopje work, but all citizens. Phenomena such as nationalism, separatism, violence, insecurity, fear, disrespecting the human life as the biggest value take us several years back and we, as citizens, have to start building defense mechanisms and methods to minimize them, and at the same time to give some concrete contribution towards building a strong and healthy society such as the Scandinavian countries have.