Vacation from war

Holidays from War - Dialogues Across Borders is a project that has existed since 1994 that conducts peace education camps for young people from the countries of the former Yugoslavia and dialogue seminars with young people from Israel and Palestine . The initiator and sponsor is the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy . By 2013 over 21,000 young people from the former Yugoslavia and over 1,600 young adults from Israel and Palestine, including women's groups, had taken part in the encounters.

Origin and structure

Vacation from War was initiated in 1994 by Hanne and Klaus Vack , founding members of the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy. From 1996 to 2013 the coordination was with Helga Dieter, since 2013 it has been with Brigitte Klaß, Tessa Pariyar and Katharina Ochsendorf. The office is in Cologne.

The non-profit project is financed exclusively through private donations and partly organized through voluntary civic engagement . This applies above all to the employees of the partner organizations, who largely determine and implement the peace policy content of the seminars themselves.

activities

Former Yugoslavia

In the territory of the former Yugoslavia, the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy organized for the first time in 1994, while the wars were still in progress , "Holidays from war" on the Mediterranean for refugee and orphaned children from emergency shelters so that they could recover physically and mentally . Today, Holidays from War in the former Yugoslavia works in two projects with different focuses.

When working with young people from Bosnia-Herzegovina , Serbia and Croatia , in addition to the first encounters in the form of holidays together, the focus is primarily on the follow-up activities of the participants, which they mostly organize themselves in different cities in all three countries. Especially in cities that are actually ethnically divided, such as Gornji Vakuf-Uskoplje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, they perform together or initiate peace marches. A video in which former participants sang and staged the song Samo da rata ne bude (“Only that there is no war”, 1987) by the Serbian singer Dorde Balasevic attracted particular attention . The video was clicked over 65,000 times within a few hours and discussed in over 129 Internet forums and in the national press.

Holidays from War is also active in Kosovo and enables joint camps for young people from the Albanian majority as well as the Serb and Roma minorities from the city of Rahovec in Kosovo .

Israel and Palestine

Since 2002, in cooperation with local partner organizations , Ferien von Krieg has been inviting young adults from Israel and Palestine ( West Bank ) to two-week dialogue seminars in Germany several times a year . In seminars led by Israeli and Palestinian moderators, they work on their own concerns about the Middle East conflict , including the collective suffering of one side and the other, and they get to know the “foreign view” of the history of the conflict. Critical topics such as the construction of settlements , the construction of the barrier , suicide bombings on Israeli civilians, as well as the war in Gaza 2008/09, also known as Operation Cast Lead or the second Intifada, are deliberately not left out.

In the meantime, there are more and more follow-up meetings, projects and groups in the home regions, supported by holidays from the war , that pass on their experience across borders. There is also an annual women's seminar in which, in addition to the conflict, the role of women in both societies is discussed.

Holiday games for 150 children each in Nablus and Gaza (city) were organized during the summer holidays .