Building A Future With Peace and Tolerance

By Kim Bradley

Alban Mehmeti, who turns 20 in December, has a message for anyone who's willing to listen: "Let us all build a future with peace and tolerance." These are the words he used to wrap up a recent essay on the topics of peace and tolerance, and what they mean for his conflict-stricken home — Kosovo.

Alban was only 11 when the war between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians escalated in 1999. He remembers fleeing his home with his family and staying with a relative in a different village during that time. In all, they were locked inside for two weeks, unable to leave the house, not even to shop for groceries. "We were very worried about our food supply," Alban remembers. "We were locked in the house and couldn't go out at all."

Now, almost nine years later, Alban is promoting peace and tolerance in his hometown of Vushtrri, a town of 100,000 just north of Mitrovica. As president of his school's youth council, he was engaged in a Catholic Relief Services-sponsored peacebuilding program called "Youth Securing the Future," a forum where young people representing all ethnic groups are working toward a common understanding.

A recent Youth Securing the Future essay competition on the topic of peace and tolerance won Alban and three other students, two other Albanian and one Serb, a trip to the United States. During their visit, they met with their American counterparts to talk about the challenges of living in an ethnically divided world.

"We see other countries living in peace and tolerance. That pushes us to change our environment, to make it more peaceful and tolerant," Alban notes. "Here [in the United States], there are no problems with different nationalities living together. In Kosovo, that's missing."

Alban had previous interactions with Serbian teens during a multiethnic ski camp some time ago. One of his most memorable moments was when a Serbian boy started singing Albanian patriotic songs one night. "I was so surprised," he remembers.

Alban cites the language barrier as one of the main reasons for not having more interactions with Serbs his age. "It's not that young people don't want to talk to each other. But we don't speak the same language." And then there are logistical restrictions, the result of a longstanding conflict. "Serbs can't come to my city and I can't go to their village," he explains.

Despite their differences, Serb and Albanian youth are facing similar economic problems. In a country where the official unemployment rate is 45 percent and people under the age of 25 make up 60 percent of the population, even internships are hard to come by. As president of his youth council, Alban's main focus was to address the lack of opportunities for young people, for example by engaging them in vocational training and working with them on their resumes.

Alban just graduated from high school and plans to go to college to study international relations. His ambition, to change the future of Kosovo, seems unshakable. "Our society has experienced conflict but we, the young people, know about countries that live in peace and tolerance, and that knowledge moves us to take action and move towards peace."

Kim Bradley works as a communications officer for CRS. Kim recently traveled to our programs in Peru with winners of the 2007 Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence.