So I’ve been here just over 2 weeks and while I still haven’t found an apartment, things are settling in. I am working for TPO (check it out at tpo.ba) an organization that is the non-profit arm of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (CIPS), a program at the University of Sarajevo. The program focuses on gender, democracy and human rights and religious studies (and I just went to the graduation ceremony for the first generation of graduates). For TPO I am working on various grant applications for several programs that they have and doing some program eval and other policy wonk type stuff. It’s a great place for a practical application of what I’ve been doing at the Evans school the last couple of years.
We (myself and 2 TPO staff) just spent a couple of days at a project in Bijeljina and Bratunac last Thursday and Friday reporting (well I was just sitting and listening) on the status of women returnees. Both of these cities are in Republika Srpska, a separate entity from the Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina, but still part of the country. Republika Srpska is in the north and east, bordering Croatia and Serbia and has a majority population of Serbs. The Federation is primarily Croat and Bosniak, with Croats in the south and west and Bosniaks in the center. While both of these make up the country of BiH they function quite differently, with separate parliaments, presidents, executives, police forces, and pretty much everything else you can think of as separate. Although the national presidency is rotated between the three main constituents, Republika Srpska still maintains a high level of independence, be that negative or positive depending on your perspective.
The program that TPO was reporting on is part of their larger national scale “Social Inclusion of Women Returnees” project that targets women returnees (primarily Bosniaks). TPO was reporting data on returnee employment and political and social inclusion to the representatives of various gender and women’s groups in the regions. The results were disappointing, as their data reported that women returnees continually are underemployed and struggle with political and social participation, even 12-15 years after having returned. This community obviously faces greater challenges due to being women returnees, often without a traditional breadwinner (husband, son or children in general) and the overall theme in the discussions that happened after the data was presented was the level of uncertainty present in the daily lives of women returnees. Official unemployment hovers around 50% though the actual number is likely a little lower as the informal economy fills in some of the gaps. Women in particular are often more likely to take part in informal economies since they can make money selling crafts and prepared foods from stalls and homes (although they won’t admit to this in the surveys and so the data is skewed from the start) . Many women view their lives in survival mode.
”When you don’t work how do you live?”
“We don’t live we survive.”
They survive from eating from their gardens, remittances from children living abroad and working informally and sporadically. What is here today may be gone tomorrow and so it’s difficult to trust that the future holds much stability. And so they wait to leave, as soon as their children can afford to send for them.
This leads directly to the second theme that became apparent during these sessions, the great sense of apathy in working to change a system that’s already broken for these women.
“What concrete suggestions can you provide to help communicate job opportunities to women then?”
“Let them know jobs are available”
“But how do you suggest this?”
“Just let them know”
Part of this problem I think lies in the communist legacy of inactivity and the top-down nature of authority. From schools to work to government, tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Ask me to be critical and proactive and nothing will ever happen. People expect to be told what to do and have their problems fixed for them because, since it’s as bad as it gets and they are still surviving, it must not be that bad. And so the facilitators are left frustrated since these representatives, who are suppose to be the agents for action and change, are unable to come up with a strategy to let women in the community that jobs do exist. And so I asked the TPO facilitators, how do they stay motivated?
“How do you know we are?”
So are people just going through the motions because it ensures their personal stability? A lot of money is given to projects like these from foreign governments and international institutions and so the people who administer them and execute the projects have jobs and some sense of security. But like any situation, that’s too simplistic. Of course people and organizations are trying to affect a system that is deeply broken and mistrusted, but it takes time and patience and motivation. The war in BiH officially ended 15 years ago, but that’s not a long time, especially when you just don’t know what happened, what is happening. Case in point, one person at the meeting talked about how women are still saving the clothing of their husbands and sons in case they come back. They are not coming back. In all probability, they are dead. But again, the truth is hard to bear.
So on one hand, I hear apathy, a bit of desperation, a severe lack of empowerment and agency, but on the other hand Saturday I went to the graduation of the first generation of the CIPS MA program where young Bosnians (and internationals) are working on projects to try and rebuild their government and community. As the ambassadors of Sweden and Norway said, these are the future leaders of Bosnia. But when 50% of your political leadership in the country reiterates how Bosnia is doomed to fail and must separate, where does that leave one?
It’s been a bit of manic last couple of days overall.
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