The Centre for Nonviolent Action was among the Winners of the 2019 Krunoslav Sukić Award. The 2019 Krunoslav Sukić Award is given in recognition of promoting peacebuilding, nonviolence and human rights. In the words of the Award Committee, the Centre for Nonviolent Action was recognised for its “long standing nonviolence activities aimed at engaging individuals, special groups and veterans from all sides of the war in peace education, dialogue, cooperation and commemorations that are opening up and becoming emancipatory spaces of an inclusive culture of memory that leads to reconciliation.”
“This is the first award of this kind we have received. Thank you. It was unexpected. We at the Centre for Nonviolent Action do not meet the basic criteria, so we weren’t even hoping for the award. For one thing, we do not operate in Croatia. Though we have offices in both Sarajevo and Belgrade, we do not operate either in BiH or in Serbia or in Kosovo or Macedonia or Montenegro. We operate across borders, always aiming to overcome them and go beyond them: both the physical borders, and especially the ones in our heads. As a result, we often end up belonging nowhere, but also belonging everywhere. I think this is one of the reasons why we have been quite successful in building trust with very diverse people, though this is often enough an uphill process. It is also how we came to work with war veterans: defenders and fighters.
I would like to thank the Centre for Peace in Osijek and the Award Committee. A special thanks to the participants in our programmes who made us feel we belonged somewhere after all and many of whom built what we do with us. We also owe a debt of gratitude to those who took risks in working with us, most of all the war veterans who stepped out of their comfort zones and were sometimes labelled as traitors. We thank them for their courage to be human, above all.
Though we don’t put much stock in statebuilding, I must admit it is a special honour to receive recognition for our peacebuilding work from a different country. That tells me we are on the right path. And that we are not alone,” said Ivana Franović from the Centre for Nonviolent Action at the awards ceremony.
The official awards ceremony was held on 12 December 2019 at the Croatian National Theatre in Osijek.
For more on Krunoslav Sukić and the award that bears his name, see HERE.
Frille 1997, Krunoslav Sukić with Nenad Vukosavljević (CNA)