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Introduction:
Greg Brown, Program Officer for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), uses his experience in the Balkans to reflect on whether bringing discussions of the conflict into joint projects risks shattering what little trust has been built.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Risks of Losing Trust
Greg Brown
Program Officer, Balkans and Caucasus Programs, International Rescue Committee (IRC)
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I don't think I ever would have seen it as an opportunity to have this big
discussion about anything relating to the war but I do think if anything you can
do training with your own staff that are there so that they can be aware of the
risks that or, better, where the risks are that are there, you know how to deal
with some sort of conflict arise with the group. I think it is more about sort
of sensitizing the environment and when opportunities appear you can pursue them
further. Obviously each council was different, too. You had one council in the
south in Pristina ???, which was known as a more tolerant area, more
multi-ethnic, where in fact in the town of Prisna ???, the lengua franca is
still Turkish or it was. You have other areas where the hardest ??? KLA, the
rebel group resistance was, and you really had more atrocities committed.
Obviously there is a certain sensitivity to that, like to what was possible in
one place was not possible in another. Also just the types of groups that were
funded and the type of work they were doing maybe with one group it is pretty
much clear what they are doing; they are going to get some new tractors, and
they are going to be better able to bring their goods to market and market them
where a lot of them were killed. Okay maybe the opportunity isn't there but
there might be another group. There is an elderly group in urban Pristinia, and
it really was more. There were older Serbs that hadn't left or whatever, so then
maybe amongst those women as they are sitting around knitting there is an
opportunity to engage in discussion or shape that discussion in a way that stuff
could come up. So I think it is very subjective which I think is the difficult
part about entering into a project in partnership with another NGO because who
knows what the real opportunity really is there. It is hard to discern but I
think having the connection with them is important because then at the point at
which that would be useful and that could be really productive then you have
that resource available and I don't think people think that way. I mean it was
like the comment made earlier, you have all these people going out, UNDP's doing
one thing, this conflict group is doing another thing, this humanitarian
assistance group is doing another thing, you know OSCE or whoever is doing
another thing and there's lots of missed opportunities there.
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