Activist groups in Sarajevo face an uphill struggle in mobilising the country’s young people.
By Predrag Popovic in Sarajevo (Balkan Insight 26 May 06)


It was hardly enough to start a revolution, as there were only 19 youngsters rallying in front of the parliament, closely monitored by a more numerous contingent of regular and riot police.

But a revolution is what they say they are after – or at the very least a general awakening among Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 800,000 young people, most of whom have no jobs and no prospects, either.

"We want a revolution, by firearms, if need be," said Demir Mahmutcehajic, of the youth organisation Enough!. "People are not conscious. They are asleep.

"Everyone thinks we need to be shepherded by the party, church, mosque, or whatever. It’s the only way to get a job while the individual keeps getting ignored. That’s what bothers us."

Enough! say they have, indeed, had enough of a dysfunctional government, ethnic divisions, high unemployment and an overall bleak future. A recently announced electricity price rise was the last straw.

Uniting young people of various ethnicities and beliefs, their revolutionary rhetoric, black and white uniforms and agenda of protest marches recalls Serbia’s grass roots movement, Otpor, which took a key role in the protests that toppled Slobodan Milosevic.

"We are striving for human dignity in a country where people have to humiliate themselves to get a pension of around 100 marks (50 euro)," said Mahmutcehajic, who was a refugee in Germany, Kuwait and England in the 1990s, as war ravaged Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Though few in number, their eye-catching protests have caught the attention of pop bands and radio stations, such as Radio 202 and EFM, which have helped to spread the word.

Street protests are rare here, although protesters rallied against the joint US and British invasion of Iraq and against the Danish cartoons accused of ridiculing Islam.

But Enough! wants to steer demonstrators towards more local issues. They are not alone, either.

Another NGO, the Youth Information Agency, OIA, is also trying to awaken the population, and especially the young.

Recently, it launched an initiative for people to send 40,000 letters to government institutions demanding answers to a range of questions over the budget and education.

"We are getting no answers to these questions," OIA’s spokeswoman, Sanja Kavaz, told Balkan Insight.

The problems facing young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina are common to the whole region: poor education, unemployment, lack of prospects and an unstable political situation.

Studies by international organisations suggest as many as 70 per cent of youngsters want to leave the country, following in the footsteps of the 120,000 who have already left since the end of the war in 1995.

"There is still no law on faculty education or a strategy to create jobs for young people," added Kavaz. "There is no plan to involve Bosnia’s exiled youth in the country’s development."

More than 178,000 young people aged between 15 and 29 in the country are currently unemployed.

The representation of youth in official institutions is negligible and no political parties running in October’s general elections show any sign of getting to grips with their concerns.

Many youngsters show their dissatisfaction through apathy. Only 25 per cent of those under 29 exercised their right to vote in previous elections.

"Young people’s demands are justified but cannot be met overnight," Sefik Dzaferovic, secretary general of the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, told Radio Free Europe recently.

But Kavaz says the conservatism of the country’s youth does not help, either.

"Rather than trying to change things, they keep on supporting an inherited patriarchal system based on divisions," she said.

"We try to increase their consciousness through information and workshops, to prepare young people to take power and the responsibility that goes with it."

Mahmutcehajic is also irritated by the placidity of young people in the country.

"They expect someone else to do them favours, whether it is the [international] High Representative or other politicians," he said. "They need to realise no one will care for us until we take our destiny into out own hands."

OIA and Enough! aim to get as many young people as possible to vote in the general elections on October 1.

"The bigger the turnout, the more responsibility the ruling parties will have to assume [for youth]," said Mahmutcehajic.

But young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina have along way to go before they can match the activism of their counterparts in neighbouring Serbia.

Serbian youth also face problems of unemployment, social insecurity and dependency on parents due to lack of housing facilities and a poor education system.

Serbia’s national employment office says 47 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 are unemployed, while Serbia’s national jobcentre has 140,000 unemployed persons from 19 to 25 years of age on its books. More than 20 per cent of young people who do work in Serbia work illegitimately.

"Half the entire unemployed population is under 30 and that’s what separates the young from other sections of society," said Nikola Pucarevic, of Serbia’s Students Union.

After the Serbian ministries for youth and sport were scrapped in 2001, the education ministry was left as the last department dealing specifically with matters concerning the young.

"There is no systematic effort to resolve problems encountered by young people," said Pucarevic. "Only a proper long-term policy can lead to progress."

But if Serbian youths face much the same problems as youngsters in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at least they have a range of activist organisations designed to promote and articulate their concerns.

Recently, representatives of organisations from both countries have started examining the possibilities of working together to resolve their problems.

This month, OIA held a series of informative meetings with counterparts in Belgrade and agreed on a number of joint projects. Activists hope young people on both sides of the border will soon be joining forces to raise their voice.




Predrag Popovic is a student of journalism at Sarajevo’s Mediaplan institute. Balkan Insight is BIRN's online publication.

Source: Balkan Investigative Reporting Network