On October 12th 2014, the Election Observation Project of AEGEE organized an Election Observation Mission (EOM) to the General Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was the second mission of this project after the EOM to the parliamentary and presidential elections in Ukraine on the 25th of May 2014 . Around 45 polling and voting stations in and around Sarajevo were visited during election day. 

The observers team, at 6 AM on election day, ready to start

Learning moments and eye-openers
As members of AEGEE, we realize democracy is fragile and should never be taken for granted. Therefore we aim to strengthen democratic processes and activate political participation of young people. With this in mind we took off for Bosnia and Herzegovina, hoping to contribute to the aim of fair and honest elections and to investigate the involvement of youths in the various election processes.

Being aware of the fact that our background influences our judgments and opinions, we left for Bosnia with a certain image of this country in our minds. The media in our home countries describes Bosnia as a corrupt, bankrupt country, torn apart by nationalist tensions and deprived of any hope for a brighter future. We are happy to report that our experiences during the elections do not reflect this image completely. In almost all polling stations we have visited, we met officials that were genuinely concerned about the fairness of the election procedure, especially during the vote counting. We saw vote counters working until early in the morning to ensure all ballots were checked and cross-checked. We saw almost all polling station officials handling the elections with a high level of professionalism. In addition, we were positively surprised by the transparency of the accreditation procedure for international observers. All relevant documents, even the Bosnian election law, can be found in English online in pdf format, which is exceptional compared to other countries.

One of the most complicated political systems in the world
The Bosnian political system has been named one of the most complicated in the world. The country is divided in two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), mostly populated by ethnic Croats and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), and the Republika Srpska (RS), mostly populated by ethnic Serbs. The country knows a three-headed Presidency, consisting of a Serb, a Croat and a Bosniak, controversially elected exclusively by their respective ethnic groups and controlled by the Parliament. Apart from that, each entity has its own president. The RS President has been chosen directly during the elections on the 14th of October, whereas the prime minister of FBiH is indirectly appointed by the Parliamentary Assembly. The FBiH is divided in Cantons (regional municipalities), and RS knows a National Assembly. Consequently, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina had to fill in four different voting ballots. All inhabitants of the country voted for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly, and next to that the inhabitants of FBiH voted for their House of Representatives of the BiH Federation Parliament and the Cantonal Assemblies, and the inhabitants of Republika Srpska voted for the National Assembly of RS and the Presidency of RS.

Map of all voting and counting stations visited in and around Sarajevo

Most people will agree that this is an extremely complicated system. We clearly saw that voters and even vote counters were having a lot of difficulties understanding the procedures. We are highly concerned that this situation detracts the legitimacy of the vote and the trust of the voters, which is harmful for the credibility of the political system. One woman said, shrugging her shoulders, while explaining the voting ballot of the FBiH parliament: “No one here has a job, so everyone tries to be a politician”.

Kako glasovati? How to vote? These posters with explanations of the voting systems were hanging in every polling station.

The position of youth
During election day, we had the chance to speak to a lot of observers and other officials. It struck us that despite the fact that a surprisingly high number of polling station officials were of younger age, young voters were underrepresented. A higher voting turnout among youths would be warmly welcomed, however it was very positive to see this amount of young people involved in the elections in another way. “At least in this way, youths learn how to do democracy”, as one observer put it.

The ethnic divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina are frozen into place by the country’s constitution, which was not more than an annex to the 1995 Dayton peace agreements that put an end to the Bosnian war. According to this constitution, Bosnians are obliged by law to proclaim themselves as one of the three identities Bosniak, Croat or Serb, or “other”. Controversially, the “Bosnian and Herzegovinan” identity is not recognized. An observer told us the story of a friend of hers at the university. This woman did not particularly identify herself with either the Bosniak, Serb or Croat identity, but she was not allowed to register herself as “Bosnian-Herzegovinan”, because this identity does not exist according to law. She went to the principal and asked him: “What if I register myself as Eskimo?” This was allowed, because it falls under “other” identities. This woman is still registered as an Eskimo, an official recognized identity.

A busy polling station in Pale

Is there hope for Bosnia?
This anecdote is an example of what happens when the rules or the system of a country are being overtaken by reality. Whereas the older generation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is still stuck in its ethnically divided past, as the preliminary election results clearly show, the younger generation is slowly getting ready to move on.

A lot needs to happen for this country to leave its past behind. The election results unfortunately do not show much progress, but the people we spoke to, the dedication and integrity we have seen in the polling stations, the power and the drive of Bosnian youth that we have witnessed all give us hope for a brighter future for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This article aims to give a short background overview, there are way too many impressions to fit in one article. Visit us during the AEGEE-Fair at Agora Cagliari for the full report of our Mission.

Find here the press release we wrote for Blogactiv the day after the elections. 

Pictures from Roel de Natris, Boudewijn Steenhof,  Thomas Leszke and Marije Arentze

Written by Marije Arentze, AEGEE-Leiden 

Youth unemployment is on the main agenda in many EU member states, particularly in Greece, Spain and Portugal, where an alarming number of young people are unemployed. The YVote2014 Convention in Agrigento addressed this topic with 25 people from different EU contries.

Youth unemployment is on the agenda of all European governments, and also of the European Union. In order to discuss this situation and to contribute with new ideas and concepts to fight youth unemployment, 25 people from France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Italy met in the lovely town of Agrigento, in southern Sicily, to tackle these big issues.

The convention on Youth (Un)Employment was the third one of the YVote2014 Project and the second one focusing on one specific thematic, right after Las Palmas’ convention about the democratic gap in the EU.

The days were filled with brainstorming, discussions and workshops on topics like how to bridge the skills mismatch between what young people learn and what is demanded in the job marked, what is the added value and the role of youth organizations like AEGEE in being involved in the fight against youth unemployment, which obstacles prevent young people to start their own business and what kind of help young people need to be able to find a job. Some other specific topics were the implemention of the newly decided youth guarantee, which seeks to provide every young person with either a job, education, training or apprenticeship within four months after finishing school and what should be done about helping persons in special need (NEETs, acronym for Not in Employment, Education or Training).

During the conference, many projects and initiatives on how to fight unemployment among young people in Europe were presented. At the same time, the participants had the possibility to discuss with the mayor of Agrigento as well as with the local state attorney, Ramondo Alaimo.

Special mention was given to the task of encouraging small businesses and start-ups as well as social businesses as means to fight youth unemployment. During these workshops, the participants developed themselves concepts on how to start a social businesses in their environment.

Despite of creating business plans, everyone discussed and developed measures and objectives to fight unemployment. These ideas were used to formulate recommendations towards Members of European Parliaments in the last two days.

Focusing on the upcoming European elections, participants simulated a discussion between supporters and opponents of voting in the EU elections in 2014. In this workshop, group works and discussion circles were formed in order to find arguments and explanations why to vote and what are the concerns that people who refuse to take part in the elections have.

All of the participants enjoyed the unexpected comfort and luxury of staying in a 4-star hotel with very decent working facilities. Special thanks go to the organisers from AEGEE-Agrigento who made all this possible and provided everyone with a great and very informative convention in beautiful Sicily.

Written by Holger Schmitt, AEGEE-Berlin

Watch this video interview with Doris Pack, Member of the European Parliamant and Chair of the EU Committee on Culture and Education, made by Luis Alvarado Martínez, Kathrin Renner and Lucille Rieux from the Comité Directeur about the future of the Euroepan Union (EU) education and youth programmes.

An announcement of a new project in AEGEE is a good sign – it means that the organisation is developing and its members are interested in attracting attention to different topics hence changing this world for better. Health4Youth is the new promising project aimed at teaching us how to live better, and be healthy mentally and physically in this constantly changing world. The AEGEEan was lucky to meet with its initiators, Mayri Tiido (AEGEE-Tartu), Matthijs Overhaal (AEGEE-Nijmegen) and Katre-Helena Käppa (AEGEE-Tartu), who answered together our questions in the pause between hitchhiking all over Europe and raised the curtain over the Health4Youth project background.  

The AEGEEan: Before in AEGEE we had projects and working groups mainly focused on environment we are living in and how to save this environment from us. However, Health4Youth is something new explaining how to live properly in this environment and manage to arrange healthy lifestyle for yourself in the 21st century. How did you come with the idea of the project?

“Once upon a lifetime, Mayri had this wonderful thought of developing an awesome project for AEGEE. As she was wondering what the topic should be, she came across the health topic, which turned out into something more than a shadow of a thought. She shared her thoughts with Matthijs and Katre and that’s how she found two companions, both interested and with knowledge about the topic.

Matthijs and Mayri

The idea was developed further during an 18-hour long bus trip from Tartu (Estonia) to Warsaw (Poland). The three of us got together at the Training4Trainers event by AEGEE-Warszawa, where we brainstormed about possibilities, objectives, aims and many other aspects. We found out soon that we believe that a healthy lifestyle for students could be a key item in the future, or better yet, should already be a key subject. This is not the case, as many students are unaware of their (unintentional) bad habits, eating patterns, alternative therapies and so on.“

The AEGEEan: Which health issues you are going to tackle in this project?

“Our project deals with the health in a broad sense, where one idea is to have some focus on eating habits, how to eat cheap and healthy. Next to that we would like to explore the term “healthy lifestyle” and misconceptions about health, food, etc.”

The AEGEEan: How you are going to promote the healthy life style among AEGEE members, loving so much to spend sleepless nights, arrange crazy European Nights and parties? It must be challenging, isn’t it?

“As much as we like to party, booze ourselves to the ground and so on, we believe that the time we don’t party is the most important time to intervene with our project. Students as we are, we love to do crazy things and drink alcohol but we don’t do that 24/7 or 365 days a year. We are not here to tell you to stop boozing (our project would be dead in a second), we want to show you how you can live healthy for the rest of the time.”

The AEGEEan: How the ideal AEGEE member, involved in the Health4Youth project, should look like?

“Naturally, this is an active, participating member in AEGEE, but that alone will not get us very far with our project. This is not just a project for AEGEE alone, we want our members to spread their lifestyle to as many people as they know, their moms and dads, diabetic aunts, friends with a beer tummy, you name it. So basically involved people should be motivated and not afraid to share their knowledge. Sharing is caring, isn’t it?”

The AEGEEan: How did you three found each other in our big AEGEE community and came together to the common idea of the Health4Youth?

“As initial starters of this project, we already knew each other quite long before. Since Mayri and Katre are in the same antenna, it makes sense they knew each other. Since Mayri and Matthijs are a couple for more than a year, it makes even more sense. Since Matthijs was in Estonia quite many times already, you can put together all the pieces. The three of us were together during an exchange in Estonia with AEGEE-Praha, the Training4Trainers event in Warsaw and at the last Agora in Enschede.”

Katre-Helena Käppa

The AEGEEan: Which are the first practical things you are going to implement in this project as soon as the deadline of open call for the Health4Youth project team members is finished and project team will start working?

“The team has to be put together and they can also share their ideas and thoughts so we can’t give you an exact answer yet. But here are a few examples of ideas:

– A blog about healthy food which will be updated often, with a diverse offer of (student) dishes
– Workshops at the Agora or EBM about a healthy lifestyle for students
And mainly, stay tuned for more!”

The AEGEEan: Please, continue the sentence “The Health4Youth project is an awesome project because…”
“…it aims to make our awesome lives healthier in an interactive way!”

If you are interested learning more about this project, check the project outline here and do not hesitate to write to H4Y team at mayri.tiido@gmail.com to ask any questions or join the project team. Do not be shy to start your healthy life today!

Written by Olga Iatsyna, AEGEE-Dnipropetrovsk

Pictures: Archives of Mayri Tiido