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Home 
NewsNewsletter - Events
and Activities - Publications
International EFP Conference
21 May 2002 Press Release
SWISS CONFERENCE ABOUT EDUCATION FOR PEACE IN BOSNIA ENDS SUCCESSFULLY
21 May 2002 – (Wienacht, Switzerland) The international conference of 15-16 May, co-sponsored by Landegg International University and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), has ended successfully, with support and enthusiasm expressed by all for expansion of the university’s Education for Peace program in Bosnia. Thirty participants gathered at the university to discuss a strategy for bringing the already successful Education for Peace program to all secondary schools in BiH.
Representatives of three donor governments were present, including the Director of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Head of SDC’s Conflict Prevention and Transformation and Balkan Divisions, Chief of the Canadian International Development Agency’s Peacebuilding Unit, and a representative of Japan’s International Cooperation Agency’. Other participants included individual donors, distinguished regional Swiss officials and representatives of Rotary International.
The ten-member delegation from Bosnia and Herzegovina, headed by Mr. Željko Jerkic, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, also included Mr. Stevo Pašalic, Assistant Minister of Education for Republika Srpska, Ambassador Jugoslav Jovicic of the BiH Embassy in Switzerland, and school directors from Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Nova Bila.
Mr. Jerkic, stressing the history of harmonious ethnic relations in Bosnia before the war, and the misuse of education for the division of peoples during the war, called Education for Peace an “outstanding and specially valuable project, which will help us to re-invent communication between people, long-term cooperation, harmony and civilized dialogue among the various ethnic groups in our country”.
The Education for Peace program has “struck the right chord in BiH”, said Mrs. Meliha Alic, Director of the Sarajevo Gymnasium, where EFP has been enthusiastically implemented by teachers, students and staff for the past two years. Mr. Pasalic shared with the conference “the support of the RS Ministry of Education … and our intention to actively participate in the extension of the project to all secondary schools." Messages of support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Mujo Demirovic, Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport for FBiH, and Wolfgang Petritsch, the High Representative, were read to the conference, expressing support for expanding EFP throughout Bosnia and citing the positive effects it has already had on teachers and children, administrators, school staff and parents, and in the community.
A four-year plan is now in place to implement the EFP program in all secondary schools throughout BiH, using both on-site intensive and Web-based versions, and to coordinate international and national sponsors whose combined resources will, it is hoped, underwrite the cost.
