CIAO DATE: 04/04

Negotiation and Capacity Building in Montenegro: Workshop on Education, Workshop 5: Education

Introduction

The ECMI project "Negotiation and Capacity Building in Montenegro" was launched with the aim to establish a Track II informal negotiation process providing a forum for interethnic dialogue between Serbian and Montenegrin communities, which includes minority communities from the Sandžak border region. Through a series of workshops, the project aims to help promote dialogue, identify issues of common concern and assist in delivering concrete benefits as well as building confidence between the communities involved. By focusing the debate on the concrete needs of these communities, the project seeks to facilitate thinking about future interethnic relations in a less charged atmosphere, irrespective of the deeper political questions on the future constitutional arrangements of the two republics.

The project engages political party representatives, government officials and civil society groups (NGOs) in dialogue, while placing particular emphasis on establishing a Track II process with broader civil society involvement across all communities. In this way, the process broadens public debate and can function even when official government-to-government contacts prove difficult or impossible. Through engaging international and local experts, the project also seeks to provide the participants with external guidance on policy options in relation to each of the issues under review.

In a preparatory phase during the summer of 2001, field missions to Belgrade and Podgorica were carried out in order to conduct discussions with politicians, scholars and minority representatives to enlist their support and help identify issues of particular concern to all communities. Several issues — education, freedom of movement and regional economic development, and the administration of justice — were eventually identified to be dealt with in four separate workshops. The present report relates to a second workshop held on education in Podgorica (Montenegro) on 27 June 2002.

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