The term also deciphers as dealing with war crimes and massive human rights abuses committed in violent conflicts. Moreover, these concepts in todays world represent the establishment of tribunals, truth commissions, lustration of state administrations, settlement on reparations, and also political and societal initiatives devoted to fact-finding, reconciliation and cultures of remembrance.

Intentionally, we opened this article by providing some elements which shortly conceptualize the processes of Dealing with the Past and Transitional Justice. We did this as people often had difficulties to understand our concepts and our work.

The Kosovo War was an armed conflict that lasted from 28th of February 1998 until 11th of  June 1999. This led to major civil casualties and victims differently categorized. In 2008 a joint study by the Humanitarian Law Center (an NGO from Serbia and Kosovo), The International Commission on Missing Persons, and the Missing Persons Commission of Serbia made a name-by-name list of war and post-war victims. According to the Kosovo Memory Book, 13,421 people were killed in Kosovo during the conflict, from 1st of  January 1998 up until December 2000. Of that sum, 10,533 were Albanians, 2,238 were Serbs, 126 Roma, 100 Bosniaks and others. In mass opinion these statistics remain only mathematical numbers, with no stories, sensation and history behind. . Usually, the destiny and histories of the victims of Kosovo are generalized and directly transformed into numbers, not names and personal history. Each direct victim of war has its story and its own history. Each story is original and meaningful story for victims. Taking this into consideration, we have been engaged to assisting development of Kosovo, namely in the context of peace and democracy by dealing with and promoting stories and experiences of the victims from the last wars in Kosovo (Memory Books and Short Narrative Documentaries), thus contributing to the processes of democracy, building of trust, coexistence and conflict transformation.

Facing the past in Kosovo is done in a conscious and unconscious fashion associated with sluggish attitude but in general there were positive results being observed. Although Kosovo declared its independence on 17th  of February 2008 moving onto a sovereign state, the local and international actors are still very strongly involved in shaping the Kosovo future and opening new avenues of opportunity. However, the destructive policy making, non-lateral planning and the incompetency of the Kosovo leaders in decision making has led to problematic and perplexing processes. “We try to fit, not to create.” This political situation has its roots in the Kosovar history of “surviving interventions” and the need to protect and defend your own group. Group identities are very strong and lead to nationalistic expressions in everyday life and a lack of understanding of people, values and interests that are not a priority for that particular group when it comes to taking into consideration the view of the opposing group.

           In three years (2011 – 2013), we have managed to produce 59 Narrative Documentary Films (production continues) with stories of Kosovo victims from different ethnicities (45 Albanians and 14 other minorities). Considering the capital materials produced and owned material and the societal need to confront the truth, Integra has entered community boost_r competition aiming to come up with an online platform for depositing documentary films materials and making them available to the larger audiences in Kosovo, region and wider. The online platform project would serve as a go-to place and an umbrella resource for oral history and people’s testimonies about the Kosovo conflicts in the 1990s. In a later stage, as part of the web platform’s sustainability development, the platform could possibly be expanded to include the former Yugoslavia region as well. This is a unique opportunity for the victims to share their war experiences and raise their concerns about current developments with regard to moral and material acknowledgments needed from the society and the state. By doing so, we aim to move forward through the means of information and technology. This particularly helps promoting government accountability and raising the people’s awareness on casualties of war, missing persons, dignity of victims and their families, as well as on bringing the perpetrators to justice.

           Integra’s experience in the field of information and technology has not been satisfactory. Cooperation with TechSoup in this project has opened a new dimension on the scope of Integra’s work and interest. Reaching wider audiences is perceived as a matter of present urgency by us. Inserting PR for widening our outreach into virtual spaces is rapidly showing progress and we will keep doing so and improving our skills in an online world. The process of building the online platform is going in accordance with general expectations and we as an involved institution in the process are learning by doing and this happens to be a long but a very pleasant journey toward exploring creative and modern aspects of today world.

Photo in this article was published by dan4th  on FLICKR under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 License