Interview with Elina Khachatryan and Adelina Tërshani from the project Rondine “Cittadella della Pace”.
Introduction
Last May I participated as a restorative justice mediator in the 12th European Restorative Justice Forum’s Conference in Tallinn. Many were the themes related to Restorative Justice, and it was a very insightful week. One of the topics was the importance of Restorative Justice in armed conflicts, a controversial and very unique theme that attracted my attention. Specifically, a panel was conducted by young people from different restorative justice projects aimed to build a new approach to the armed conflicts, and two of them were Elina Khachatryan and Adelina Tërshani students from the World House project in Rondine “Cittadella della Pace”. First of all, “Rondine Cittadella della Pace” is an organization that is committed to the reduction of armed conflicts in the world and the diffusion of its methodology for the creative transformation of conflict in every context. The goal is to contribute to a planet free of armed conflict, in which every person has the tools to creatively manage conflicts in a positive way. Rondine was born in a medieval Tuscan village a few kilometers from Arezzo, in Italy: this is where Rondine’s main projects for education and training are structured. The project that gives rise and inspiration to Rondine is the International Student House – World House, which welcomes young people from countries experiencing armed conflicts or post-conflicts and helps them discover the person in their enemy, through the difficult and surprising work of coexistence daily.
Rondine’s World House: a new idea of Restorative Justice Peace.What is it for?
Elina Khachatryan[1] : Rondine[2] is an organization which gathers together young enemies. The young people start the programme from 21 until 26, 27 years old, but sometimes there are exceptions.Youngsters who want to join the project of Rondine arrive from countries in conflict or post conflict countries in couple of enemies. In fact the main idea from Rondine, is that “I can’t come here alone”, that’s why I need to have “my enemy” here, because the general goal of Rondine is a relational/restorative approach to a conflict. Also, Rondine believes that the resolution of conflicts starts basically with communication which we’re building here through learning to live together, studying together and seeing “The so-called enemy”.For example, we do “Locanda together”. This is the place where we eat, it’s our kitchen-and there we meet our so-called enemy every day. For example, me and an Azerbaijani guy can be put together in the work shift, so we have to communicate in order to make it. Even if I choose not to speak with my enemy, there is a time where we have to deal with each other and to have a dialogue, in order to manage a job.
The story of laundry is very meaningful; in fact, the first ever students here in Rondine were from Russia and Chechnya, because there was a war between these countries and Franco Vaccari[3] – our founder – has been asked to take some students to study in Italy because their university was destroyed. So, he started thinking: if I’m taking students from Chechnya, I’m going to take students from Russia as well. The problem was that they were not ready to share their daily lives together, as shown by the fact that they didn’t want to wash their intimate clothes in the same washing machine. And if you can’t even wash your clothes together, how are you going to live together as neighbors?
That consideration is really significant, because in Rondine we’re living together all day, in fact on our usual day in Rondine we have classes, such as courses in Italian, and we study together. A huge part of the courses is related to the conflict itself, but we also discuss topics like nonviolent communication and self-growth. Through these courses we analyze our conflict and present it to our group mates, but of course it’s not only that, just in our daily life, we have the possibility to sit with our so-called enemy, discuss our conflict and share our opinions about that.
Rondine for me is basically a platform to communicate, because I also mentioned how important the communication is when we are approaching, when we are addressing the conflict, this is the first step that has to be done. In my situation for example: our countries, our people, Armenians and Azerbaijanis are not able to just meet and communicate. I’ve never met any Azerbaijani person before and Rondine gives me this opportunity to meet the other side and listen to their experiences, their narratives, communicate, indeed see the person and feel empathy for the other.
Adelina Tërshani[4]: I found out about the project of Rondine through a friend from Kosovo, who did this program four years ago and to me, it sounded like a very interesting concept to have people here from all conflicts and post conflict countries and as students, to do our masters, to live together, to also have these trainings on peacebuilding, on conflicts and how it can actually work for us. I decided to come because I don’t think there is another place in the world like Rondine. It’s very unique, and the fact is that everything we do here is based on our relationships with each other. This special concept is so crucial to me, even more than practical trainings, workshops, or talking about peace and our conflicts, because it’s so important that me and my so-called enemy have a coffee together rather than go in one of the trainings together without establishing a concrete relationship. This experience is very significant and very unique for me and is a challenging experience for two years. Fortunately, there’s a lot of programs on peace building and bringing us together from Serbia and Kosovo, so I had a chance to meet people from there and I have very good friends from Serbia too, from Belgrade, but being here and living for two years, it’s different.
What brought you this project and what do you want to do when you come back to your Country?
Elina Khachatryan: That’s a nice question! Because actually, before coming here, I thought, I knew everything. I have to tell that I needed to know about this conflict because here, by talking with Samir – the Azerbaijan guy – I explored a lot of things that I could never know by being in Armenia, because we never speak about the other side. If I’m searching news, trying to read or to explore even the situation from the other side, it is difficult, because the information is so close. In Rondine, I explored a lot of things about the situation in Azerbaijan and first of all I became aware that there is opposition, and though the government has very strict policies against these powers, they continue their actions, which is something great for me. This kind of approach, that we can call like a restorative justice approach, is when those people who attended come back to their country and try to do something. Actually, that’s a hard thought, especially because I don’t think that Armenians are ready to somehow, at some level, talk about this. Sometimes I’m thinking I’ll go back even (let’s start from there) if the majority of my relatives don’t understand why I’m here and don’t appreciate what we are doing here and also some of my friends can’t tolerate me being here and can’t try to understand what I’m doing here.
Although I’m going to pursue the topic of Restorative Justice for sure, even in the future, and of course, the perfect scenario of Rondine is that we go back to our countries and we do initiatives and project in our countries, even if it’s not always possible. Firstly, because some projects are possible to do only from Italy or only from somewhere else, not back home, because of the situation there. Secondly, as we always say, we can’t change the whole situation, it’s not easy to stop the wars and bring peace, but maybe among us there is somebody who will become a future leader of a country, or have an important position, that can influence what’s going on in the world, who can influence the decision-making and having lived this experience here makes us always remember about the other side and to see things also from the other side, not only from ours. If we teach the same to our children, we can somehow change something at least a little bit. This is very important.
Additionally, this kind of restorative approach means that in the context of war – if we remove the government and we see only people – both sides are the victims: in this case, I see me and Samir as victims, and we are here to talk about it. I apologize to him for everything that has been done by my government for ages, and he is apologizing to me for everything that his government was doing to my country for ages, so we are in the same position. Like this we are trying to restore that harm, even if we can’t do it physically. Of course, we can’t give each other territories, or bring back all lives that have been lost… we are not the ones to decide the fate of politics.
Actually, I think the whole idea is to restore it. Because we come here with a background, with different and difficult histories. But I think that wars have no borders and the whole world is affected when a war starts. We need a more open minded and restorative approach to how we can go back to the things before they are broken, like opening people’s hearts to understand the other side of the story before it really gets ugly. Now I’m trying to create a project to bring them one step closer to that communication and one step closer to the dialogue. It’s the first step, because it will take a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of hard work. But let’s see: I am full of hope.
Adelina Tershani: What I like about what is behind the whole idea and when the project ends, is the fact that you become part of this community that we call the “Rondini d’Oro” and you can stay in contact with other alumni, because we should remember there are people that cannot go back to their countries because of what happens during their two years of staying here and because of what happened in their countries, so obviously not every time you can implement your project back home. In my experience, when I met Rondini d’Oro -because I went to visit a friend that already did the program and he lives here now, they were actually helping each other to find ways event to live in Italy meanwhile thinking about projects that they could do together and they wouldn’t know each other if it wasn’t for Rondine. Alumni also have their association called Rondine International Peace Lab – RIPL, through which we can implement activities together and share experiences.
Actually, this has to be considered more successful and good results than going back and necessarily doing one single project. What I like that we do here is having our testimonies in different parts of Italy, spreading this idea that we can coexist, we can work, even though we had this kind of past. The positive side of it is that Rondine made this happen: the fact that we could meet here and live together, it was the result of it. Even though it is for me a very huge responsibility. Actually, at the end of the program I’m planning to go back home to do slam poetry night. I have a lot to tell to my people to share this idea of Rondine and how it actually functions because, sometimes it sounds very strange to people. How can you make a city of peace with people that come from wars? I want to explain how it works and how it all started, like the laundry story and about us coexisting. Also, I cannot run away from my cause as a feminist activist, so, obviously, I plan to continue my work within civil society, because I found myself within civil society, just trying to help again women and girls around in Kosovo to fight for their basic rights, such as labor rights, non-discrimination in the labor market, in private and public spaces, to be even more vocal against femicide, because it’s a phenomenon that is happening not only in Kosovo, but unfortunately around the world and I find worrying the lack of serious response from justice institutions.
Moreover, I pitched the idea of writing a book such as an exhibition about stories of women who were raped during our conflict from both sides, but after the conference in Tallinn, this good mix of all those people that I met, all those academics, it opens the door for me in terms of what I can do within restorative justice as a field; so maybe my project, in the end, will be all about restorative justice but in the context of war, as I mentioned, I’m over and I’m reviewing this, understanding that all sides, both sides, are the victims of the story when we’re talking about war.
Note
[1] Elina has a Bachelor in law and promotes dialogue and reconciliation between civil society, organizations and religious realities affected by the conflict in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
[2]The story of Rondine Project is available on their website: https://rondine.org
[3] Franco Vaccari is the president and the founder of Rondine “Cittadella della Pace”, he was born in Arezzo in 1952.
[4] Adelina is a dedicated feminist activist and the pioneering figure of slam poetry in Kosovo. She holds a degree in Journalism from Hasan Prishtina University.
Foto copertina: Restorative Justice