Centre for Nonviolent Action

CNA works with various groups including teachers, journalists, activists, social workers, youth workers, and political party activists.[2] Its main target group is young people working for NGOs, political parties and youth organizations, who are able and willing to spread their skills to the community.[4] Since their founding, CNA organized several training programmes.

Basic and advance trainings bring people from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo. Those programs focus on prejudice reduction, mutual trust building and constructive dealing with the past. Training for ex-combatants is organized for soldiers who actively participated in wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia in different armies, and focuses on encouraging dialogues and empowering veterans to participate in peace building. "Mir-Paqe-Мир training" has been held every year since 2015 and pays special attention to understanding the context of Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia. CNA also organizes training for students from Bosnia and Herzegovina, with goal of developing peacebuilding foundations for future generations of public opinion and policy makers.[5]

The organization wants to work with war veterans from the 1990s in a "constructive" way. At the beginning of the project, right after the war, the organization was working only with civilians, mostly young people.[6] However, in 2002, war veterans were included as a target group, as part of the project "Dealing with the Past".[4] Many veterans were open to dialog and willing to work on reconciliation. Compared to the young civilians, they had a much greater impact on local media. Over time, the peace activities from CNA involved several groups of veteran associations in the cities across former Yugoslavia, and continued to hold trainings and public meetings.[6]

CNA created a series of movies and documentaries.

• "Small Faculty of Activism" (film, 2017). This film features Training of Trainers from 2014.[7]
• "Alien Home" (documentary, 2017). Its goal is to portrait the pain of those who are forced to migrate their home.[7]
• "The Fortress" (short film, 2013). Based on the book by Mesa Selimovic, in memory of a girl from Bosnia.[7]
• "Visits of Veterans" (documentary, 2009).[7] Documentary film about joint visit of combats from Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia to the place of suffering.[8]
• "Not a Bird to be Heard" (documentary, 2007).[7] Simulated dialog between Bosnians and Croatians. Theme is the war, suffering, hatred, pain, and difficulty of the past.[8]
• "All Wish to Cast the Stone" (documentary, 2006).[7] Film from the series of simulated dialogs, which deals with attitudes between people of Serbian and Croatian descent. [8]
• "It Cannot Last Forever" (documentary, 2006).[7] Documentary from the series of simulated dialogs, focused on attitudes of Serbians and Croatians ten years after the war in Bosnia.[8]
• "Traces" (documentary, 2004).[7] Four former combats share their motivation to leave the war in the 1990s, their current views of the past, and knowledge they obtain in the meantime.[8]