Berghof Foundation: 50 years of conflict transformation

Supporting peace from
below in the aftermath
of the Cold War
1990s
The end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, the breakdown of former Yugoslavia, the more
or less radical regime changes in Eastern Europe
and the reunification of Germany characterised
the political landscape of the early 1990s. During
this period, 22 new states were (re-)established,
many of which immediately experienced violent
political conflicts. A key driver of these conflicts was
tension between ethno-national minorities who had
managed to co-exist in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia
and in the communist states of Eastern Europe. Yet,
in the newly emerging nation-states, the majority
community insisted on retaining a dominant position.
These conflicts particularly affected Croatia, Serbia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and several regions of
the Soviet Union, as well as Eastern European states
with significant minority communities.
As new regional or national majorities or
minorities were created in the borders of these ‘new’
states, the institutions of the old communist states —
socialist parties, trade unions and various strategic
elites — ceased to be the dominant decision-makers.
Emerging political leaders like Slobodan Milosevic
often referenced the grandiose or painful past in
order to justify their communities’ and their
personal leadership claims.
Like many other observers, the Berghof
Foundation was tempted to find entry points for
conflict transformation in the quickly evolving
federal landscapes of the Western Balkans and the
former Soviet Union. After closer investigation, we
realised that — due to our background with issues
of minority protection in multi-ethnic contexts —
our team at the time was best equipped to deal with
a more latent conflict occurring in Romania after the
revolution of December 1989 between the Romanian
majority community and the Hungarian minority
in Transylvania, a region which had belonged to
Hungary prior to World War I. Developments in
the city of Targu Mures in March 1990, seen as
a potential trigger for something similar to what
happened in Yugoslavia, motivated us to study the
situation in detail and consult with partners from
and in Romania.
Over the next few months, we developed
a training concept for a group of junior politicians,
representatives of youth organisations and religious
leaders with a high potential of reaching other
interested and influential groups. Participants
learned about analysing and transforming political
conflicts and how to engage with each other
effectively across different identity groups. Based
on experiences in other projects, we were aware
of the need to create long-lasting interpersonal
exchanges, which is why we organised several
week-long seminars spread out over three years
in different countries and environments.
Several of the participants — particularly
those with an academic, political, educational
or religious background — made use of the tools
from our events in various ways, with one group
generating their own training course and some of
the participating politicians and academics making
use of Berghof´s guest scholarship programme
to develop their own ideas and proposals for a
settlement of the Romanian-Hungarian conflict.
An official press event to present the issues and
results of the project was organised in May 1995 in the
Council of Europe’s Romanian Office in Bucharest.
One year later, in September 1996, Romania
and Hungary signed a Treaty of Understanding,
Cooperation and Good Neighbourliness.
The lessons from the Transylvania project
encouraged Berghof to expand its outreach to other
regions in Central and Eastern Europe. Workshops
in Moscow (1995) and Warsaw (1996) saw a group
of 50 peace and minority rights activists grappling
with how to manage, settle and transform conflicts
in line with the concepts of ‘good governance’ and
‘participatory democracy’. Only 16 of the participants
were affiliated with formal NGOs — the vast majority
belonged to informal networks, some working as
solo activists in their respective countries and
regions. They examined cases covering a broad
spectrum within what is currently called ‘illiberal
peacemaking,’ such as the Chechen-Russian conflict,
the consensual dissolution of Czechoslovakia and
the settlement of several conflicts between various
republics and the Russian federal government.
These workshops focused on multi-ethnic
community- and bridge-building, but also covered
advocacy for non-violence and minority rights,
mediation, and empowerment. The experience and
lessons learned during these explorations would
influence our work in many other contexts over the
subsequent decades.
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