SARAJEVO April 6, 1992 : WAR !
DAYTON 1995 AGREEMENTS
AESI PEACE MISSION
SARAJEVO / BELGRADO RETTORI
MISSIONE DI AESI PER LA PACE
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, on April 6, 1992, a war began that would last more than 3.5 years and the longest siege in modern history on a city, the capital Sarajevo, by Bosnian Serbs who did not want independence from Belgrade, with 11,000 dead, 1,650 of them children. Across the country 328,000 victims.
It was the longest siege in modern history, more than that of Stalingrad during World War II, of a physically vulnerable city, indefensible from attacks. Sarajevo is 700 meters high, but surrounded by mountains that exceed two thousand meters and slope down into rolling hills. From a month before that April 6, 1992, which marks the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the siege, on the heights around the capital, cannons, mortars, katiuscia, kalashnikov, machine guns and snipers of the JNA, the Yugoslav National Army that has now become Serbian instrument to try to prevent the unraveling of the Belgrade-controlled Federation, have been stationed.
On March 3, in fact, the Sarajevo parliament proclaimed the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, after that of Slovenia and Croatia, after a referendum accepted only by Muslims (then 43.7 percent of the population) and Croats (17) but not by Serbs.
It would close on November 21, 1995, with the signing of the Dayton Peace. In the middle, in Sarajevo alone, 11,000 deaths including 1,650 children, and 52,000 injured, among the approximately 280,000 inhabitants left, often without water, electricity and gas. Throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, there will be 328,000 dead or missing, almost one million internally displaced people and one million refugees abroad, for a country that in 1991 had 1.4 million inhabitants.
The biggest conflict in Europe since World War II mobilized the international community, the UN and its humanitarian agencies, the solidarity of the whole world (many campaigns and “missions” also of private individuals from Italy), but it did not stop, except after the horror of the second massacre of civilians at the Markale market, in August 1995.
AESI PROMOTING UNIVERSITY COOPERATION FOR PEACE
AESI promoted and developed this program for more than 10 Academic Years facilitating the dialogue between Sarajevo and Belgrade Universities and cooperation among the BiH Universities.
In the Balkans, at the end of the dramatic conflict, a new strategy of collaboration between the University Cooperation and the United Nations was born in favor of peace. The common goal was to create an academic program by Rome Sapienza University that aimed at the reconstruction and real civil integration of the countries involved in the conflict through academic training in the Public Administration and Humanitarian Aid sectors of their young graduates (Serbs, Muslims and Croats). This project coordinated by Prof. Massimo María Caneva and supported by AESI would have allowed the next generation to remain in the countries of origin and the program certainly represented the first field action in this field at the international level between the University and the United Nations with their Peace Forces. In 2001, infact, the First Conference of Balkan Rectors in Sarajevo was organized for this in the UN HQ in Sarajevo. The Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Amb. J.P. Klein UNMIBH and the Rectors of the Balkans. Shortly thereafter, the Rectors of Sarajevo and Belgrade met to sign an agreement for a Masters in State Management and Humanitarian Affairs that would have seen more than 120 young graduates from the various universities, especially from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia attend. Many of them would have found work and actively participated in the state institutional development (one of them was Deputy Mayor of Sarajevo, others are Legal Advisers of the Presidency of the Republic, etc.) and international.
PROVE DI PACE
