Beyond Victims and Victimizers: Local Peace-Building Agency in Yugoslav Conflicts and its Visibility in Influential US and UK Media 1991-1995

Abstract

Although Yugoslav wars have become an almost obligatory reference in policy literature, the representations of this conflict frequently reduce the role of local population to that of victims and victimizers, with little or no attention for local peace-building agency. This failure to perceive local population in their actively peace-building role results in opportunities missed, both during the conflict itself as in the post-conflict peace-building operations. This thesis researches possible origins of these distortions by examining the visibility of local agency in non-local media at time of conflict. The first part focuses on describing the local peace-building agency during the conflict in former Yugoslavia (1991-1995). The second part examines its representation in the major US and UK media in the same period of time (CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Independent, The Guardian and documentary “Death of Yugoslavia”).