Education and the freedom from exclusion.

• Author: Mazzucelli, Colette
• Position: ESSAY - Using Internet to prevent ethnic conflict

The divisiveness of ethnic conflict within a State and among groups in its society is increasingly salient in the global environment of the twenty-first century. This fact illustrates at once the challenges to sovereignty from sub-national actors. It speaks directly to the necessity for citizens in areas of conflict and those beyond its physical borders to be aware of their different realities and to learn together to create a less violent world. The brutality of ethnic conflict over the past decade creates an ethical imperative for a type of learning which is unprecedented: the establishment of an Internet pedagogy for conflict prevention accessible to an emerging networked world society. In our experience, this pedagogy can only be created over time, through trial and error, implementing concepts in practice. Therefore, its creation will need to surmount numerous challenges, chief among them the technological and infrastructure disparities that presently exist in the world today.

In the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26 affirms the fundamental right to education, and its role to "promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and ... further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace". Article 19 we may interpret to establish the principle which, in my view, may be defined as freedom from exclusion, in that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (1)

In the ongoing efforts to create the Transatlantic Internet Seminar Kosovo/a and Southeastern Europe (TISKSE) (http://www.rboston.com/bosch), (2) experience taught us that the major limitation in our endeavour has been that we could not establish connections to include Pristina. Therefore, we welcomed the extensive experience and regional knowledge of guest speakers, like former multinational force (KFOR) commander General Klaus Reinhardt; Professor Jacques Rupnik, who is a member of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo; former Hungarian Foreign Minister Geza Jeszenszky; and Ambassador Christian Pauls, Deputy Political Director in the German Foreign Office. Our initial contacts with Kosovars living outside Serbia were established via the FIRETALK audio room and then expanded to include a number of Kosovars from the region in the transcontinental list serv for the Internet seminar (TISK2000@yahoogroups.com).

During a 22 March programme originating from The American Academy in Berlin and broadcast in real time to seven other sites on two continents, we were able to connect directly to Pristina via a real time chat room and save the content for use in future seminars. In this programme (http://users.skynet.be/bs974554/Kosovo-E/Tisk/Tisk0.htm), Armand Burguet presented his slide images from Kosovo via Internet and spoke extensively about his experiences with the people and local leaders there. Our highest priority for the next seminar in fall 2001 will include sites in the region in our weekly sessions, using a mix of chat room, audio and, if possible, video connections.

The challenge to connect to the Balkans suggests to us that...