Global Future

In the modern world, geopolitics is rapidly conditioning historical narratives and transgenerational memory – openly trading influence in conflicts and party choices through daily-political revisionism.

How could global political disruptions, conflicting international historical narratives, and changing norms on justice and human rights shape the ways in which knowledge of wartime events from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the region will be transmitted, challenged, or withheld across generations over the next 30 years?

"It's very dark. We live in a time when everything becomes possible. In such a time, all criteria are lost. We lost them a long time ago, but we were held by the world around us. Now, it seems as if the rest of the world has gone our way, where truth is not truth, crime is not crime. Let's make a trick, to be avant-garde again! If in the 1990s we took to killing each other when the world was uniting, let us now be the first to understand all the evils that come out of it and go the opposite way again. This time in the right direction."

"Just as we were guilty of war, so should we be responsible for the peace in which we live. We're still not doing that. We will continue to look for excuses in others and not in ourselves, because it is easier that way. There will be conflicts, there will be wars. Circumstances will change, borders will change. Countries are likely to change as well. However, this does not mean that until now we have not been able to establish some rules of conduct when it comes to the attitude towards the past. Given that we are not, I am afraid that the world, in the direction it is headed, does not empower those who are in favour of dialogue, tolerance, peace and non-violence."

"International narratives, which are still relatively clear today when it comes to responsibility in war, are already showing signs of fatigue. Memory loses its power when it becomes boring or politically impractical. In the era of TikTok and realpolitik, suffering has no lasting value – unless it fits into the current agenda of the great powers. And we are used to great powers deciding when and how much our pain is worth paying attention to. In this context, transgenerational memory in BiH and the region will increasingly depend on the ability of local communities, cultural workers and education systems to preserve it from within. If we leave the memory exclusively to international institutions, it will last exactly as long as their grant cycle lasts."

"I witnessed the truth, and later watched as that truth was denied, withheld, and forgotten, and today I watch with particular concern as global indifference opens the door to dangerous revisionism. Truth is no longer a matter of evidence, but of interest. Geopolitics is increasingly choosing silence over responsibility. At a time when truth must be defended more than ever, transgenerational memory needs to become a global value. Not only through commemorations, but through education systems, international media, and digital archives that cannot remain silent."

"I think the concepts of politics and the related politics of remembrance are over…In this context, I have little hope that there will be some kind of consensus on global and local memory policies. I think that the development of artificial intelligence and post-truth politics will refine and completely pervert the current concept of history and culture of memory… What Orwell wrote in '1984', about falsifying history as a continuous process, finally gets adequate technology."

"The misery of the world's 'justice system' in not responding with concrete actions to everything we witness, step by step becomes an everyday reality built into the way of behaviour and thinking of generations to come."

"In the next 30 years, the transgenerational memory of the war in BiH will be increasingly shaped by global political disruptions and the crisis of universal values. The future of memory will depend on the ability, despite geopolitical pressures, to preserve documented facts and support an ethical attitude towards the past."

"An understanding that every human life is worth living and, as such, must have adequate institutional protection, must be present in every sound analysis. Zero tolerance for violence, whether individual or institutional, and affirming the value of human life and emphasizing the importance of peaceful dynamics in every society, are possible antidotes to any revision of history. In this way, memories are purified, thus developing a new culture of peace."

"The key will be whether the global community will continue to defend universal values or succumb to fragmentation and selective morality. If the knowledge of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is interpreted through the prism of current interests, memory will become a victim of the geopolitical market, but if awareness of the connection between local pain and global justice is built, it is possible to preserve authentic history and pass it on to future generations as a reminder, not just a memory."

"In a world where the truth is increasingly replaced by narratives that suit current interests, there is a real danger of revisionism. Think for a moment that we have learned nothing from history and past tragedies and crimes. However, this does not mean that we should stop repeating the truth, presenting arguments, fighting for the truth to prevail, because this is a key element against forgetting and, more importantly, against repeating the tragedy that Bosnia and Herzegovina has experienced."

"Global circumstances will certainly affect whether the knowledge of the war events of the 1990s will be factually transmitted or will be contested and distorted, or perhaps will simply fade in the face of the challenges of the future, but it creates an obligation for us to act against those potentially negative forces."

"Geopolitics selectively extinguishes and ignites truth, and power decides who is the victim and who is the terrorist. Transgenerational memory in this context becomes hostage to foreign policy interests. Transgenerational memory is not a museum. It is a living being – that can be nurtured, abused, raped or saved. It is our responsibility to feed it with truth and empathy. Because if we do not preserve the memory – memory will preserve us. And it will not be merciful."

"Geopolitics has always conditioned historical narratives and memory. The Balkan space is currently of interestin terms of raw materials, so economic pressure will derail the past if it is not usable for colonialist claims."

"We have not even honestly looked into the mirror of our recent past, and the world has undergone an economic-technological and ideological transformation that in a few years erased the effect of the institutions of international humanitarian and criminal law and the related archived memory. And now the so-called 'developed democracies' are splitting paragraph by paragraph, sheet by sheet of UN resolutions. The archives and jurisprudence of the Hague Tribunal, as well as all the archives of memories of the war in Bosnia, today cannot influence individual states and governments, even among the so-called 'developed democracies', to stop killing, ghettoizing, expelling, imprisoning and torturing, and systematically discriminate and segregate the population over which it has legal or factual military-administrative power."

"The UN General Assembly resolution designated 11 July as the International Day of Reflection and Remembrance, and it condemns the denial of genocide and the glorification of persons convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The clauses in the General Assembly resolution include a request for the UN Secretary-General to establish a public programme entitled 'Genocide in Srebrenica and the UN'."

"Global political disruptions, accepting lies as truth in societies created in the former Yugoslavia is an alibi for disrespect for human rights, as well as for denying one's own responsibility and guilt for wars and crimes committed in the 1990s. In this sense, I am afraid that the perspective of the region is tragic."

"European politics is necessarily heading towards revisionism. Although Europe is fighting anti-Semitism, the defeated fascist forces have disguised themselves in democratic attire and they are leading today’s European politics. This process of infiltrating defeated pro-fascist forces, who disguised themselves in democratic attire, first happened here - for example, in the name of national reconciliation, the Ustashas and Partisans reconciled, and then the Chetniks and Partisans - in the 1990s when Yugoslavia was breaking up and Bosnia and Herzegovina was being divided, and now it is happening almost throughout Europe."

"It's always the same story: the global situation inevitably affects our local opportunities. Anti-Enlightenment tendencies, populism, revisionism, authoritarianism are strengthening in the world – this all negatively affects our area, including the perspectives of maintaining and developing a culture of remembrance of war events. What is most important, both for transgenerational memory and for relationships globally-locally, is the persevering work of all those organizations and individuals dealing with the past, nurturing the culture of memory, working for reconciliation. Archives exist and are growing, testimonies are multiplying, there is more academic research, scientific studies, doctoral dissertations…"

"Every change on the global map points to the unhealed space where war crimes took place. Regardless of borders, the influences of polarized politics and capital, especially in the countries of the former SFRY, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, constantly revive nationalist narratives in the service of survival in power. This leads to citizens submitting and remaining trapped in particocracies and social differences that are the fuel for manipulation."

"I believe that the already fragile trust in the international community has now completely disappeared. Unfortunately, the countries of the former Yugoslavia have not managed to agree on a common history on their own, which is why the narrative about history will remain very much subject to geopolitical movements in which we are the periphery, and the narrative that is useful for the needs of authoritarian rule will prevail."

"Bosnia and Herzegovina is a small society that, by the nature of the modern way of life (the process of hyperglobalization), is affected by the tendencies of global power relations of key social macro-actors. In this respect, too, we return to the fundamental principles of education and science, within which a high level of humanization of the social world and social facts can be achieved. In BiH, there is no motive to do such a thing and therefore it can be said that in the future we will be faced with new schisms within which global conflicts will be excuses for perpetuating "local evil" at the ideological and symbolic level."

"It is possible that retaliation against the best universities, in the next decade, will suppress an honest historical approach to the genocide in Srebrenica.”

"Well, it is already obvious that the world as we knew it and within which memory policies were formed has disappeared. This world that is just emerging is much closer to the ruling policies here, which seem to be the avant-garde of the contemporary world. In such circumstances, we should accept this and start from quality historiography and art. I see the only sense in forming memory policies completely independently of the state and official policies."

"In 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, ideologies and fascism seemed to have come to an end. But already in the following days, the war in Yugoslavia began. Fascism returned – in its worst form, including the genocide. And we all, after Auschwitz, repeated loudly: Never again. Today, 30 years after Srebrenica, history seems to be repeating itself. Everything that seemed to have calmed down in the new century and that conflicts, at least in Europe, were being resolved peacefully, and the states of the former Yugoslavia being together again in the European Union, evaporated overnight. The spirit of violence is awakening again. The atmosphere of war, killing and exalting one's own nation over others is reborn. But what gives hope that the whole world has not become numb are the young people."