Photo: German Marshall Fund
When Huso Razic and fellow teachers took a dozen students on an exchange to Norway in 2012, the Bosnian and Croat students ignored each other on the way. But after turbulence in the air bonded them, they started hugging and chatting. Relations between the groups at Razic's school in Mostar, in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, were not always as friendly. His school adheres to the "two schools under one roof" system, in which students from different ethnic groups attend the same school in different "shifts" and are taught different curricula by different teachers. The Nansen Dialogue Center in Mostar set out to reduce this segregation, still used by more than 50 schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by offering courses and field trips to bring the different classes together. Today, NDC organizes classes each week to teach students non-violence and tolerance, human rights, and children's rights, and reduce stereotypes among themselves and toward refugees, Roma, or sexual minorities.
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