Feature

Listening to Understand

By Katarina Kruhonja


 

One of the key pillars of peacebuilding is to listen in order to understand.

Our organization, the Centre for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights, began as a few people struggling with the logic of a "total war" that was spreading among people in our besieged and shelled town in Croatia: it seemed as if there was no other way except "it is either us or them." My priority in those days was to remain open to pay attention to my own internal dialogue.

One late afternoon in 1991, I came to a decision not to accept violence. I can still vividly recall my feeling of liberation at that moment. I started searching for other answers, and I came across Kruno Sukić who had also rejected war. The peace group which we founded was the result of our lengthy discussions held in a shelter: we discussed and deliberated on what kind of human society we wished to see and what we could do to make it possible.

Our group used an approach and methodology based on listening and established The Listening Project.

In preparation for people's return to the villages from which they had fled, aiming to prevent interethnic violence and in order to rebuild trust, our peace teams interviewed about 2,000 people in approximately 10 war-destroyed multiethnic communities in Eastern Croatia and Bosnia. Most of the interviewed people later said that for the first time they had a feeling somebody was listening to them, that their suffering and their opinion were important to someone. We also learned a lot about ourselves--about our fears and prejudices, but also about our capacity to empathize with others and to see the truth as other people saw it.

In this way, we initiated communication between returnees in three neighboring Croat, Bosnian and Serb villages that had been completely destroyed during the war, facilitating meetings and dialogue between them. The inhabitants of all three villages agreed to have their children sent to spend holidays together. After a year, the villagers worked together to rebuild the football field in one village and the community hall in another.


Barricades

Although the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord stipulated that the part of Croatia which had been under Serb control for several years would be peacefully reintegrated, and that Serbs were allowed to stay while Croats were allowed to return to the region--in reality it was unthinkable that the recent enemies could live side by side. In one village, Serbs put up barricades to stop Croats from returning to their homes.

We approached the village authorities and offered to meet with the villagers in order to listen to their suggestions for a peaceful solution. Amongst our group there were people who had been displaced from that particular village and who joined us as peace activists. Now they were listening to the fears of Serb families--what would happen to them once the Croats returned to the village, and especially what would happen to those families living in Croat homes. They wished to return to their villages, too.

Children from "three sides" make a mosaic symbolizing peace, at the first youth peace camp in Latinovac, Croatia, in 1997

The villagers agreed to join efforts and restore a Croat home that would serve as a peace center for villagers to gather and discuss their problems. The returned Croats helped Serb families visit the villages in Western Slavonia from which they had fled. They advocated for the right of Serb families to return to their villages and helped the first Serb families move.

Dragica Aleksa, who learned about peace work through The Listening Project, is today active in a multiethnic peace group working on rebuilding trust in her village. Their motto is: "It is better to light a tiny spark than to curse the darkness." She says that her biggest success is not what she has done for her community, but what she has changed in herself.

The humility and humanity of listening, with its magnificent potential for peacebuilding, is based on the listener's attitude that the speakers know what they feel and need, and that they are able to express this. It shows respect for people's needs. Listening is an exchange in which I give you my time and undivided attention in a nonjudgmental way; I ask questions that are not important to me, but to you--questions that will help you express your repressed feelings, reexplore your views and search for your own solutions. Instead of solutions, advice or pity, I give you acceptance, trust and support. Listening is a joint journey in which one learns to better understand one's own situation; it is a way to let a part of the pain, shame, fear and anger go; it is focusing on the future and empowerment for action.

My friend, the Quaker peacebuilder Adam Curle, said that nothing could match the power of comrades working together--meeting and talking in every possible context (including war) and drawing in every possible group and individual until they develop an irresistible will that can embrace, withstand and transform destructive forces within ourselves and our societies. And, bit by bit, this process restructures the society.

 

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