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Juan Daniel Cruz, before beginning his career as a teacher and writer on peace and decolonization, was immersed for more than eight years with communities and peace initiatives in conflict zones in Colombia and the border areas with Ecuador and Venezuela. The contact with creativity and ancestry of marginalized communities to resist or mediate peacefully with armed groups and political elites made Juan Cruz recognize other ways to co-create peace, motivating him to study Latin American critical and decolonial approaches, which he has applied in his undergraduate, master's and Ph.D. studies, also in his classes and multiple publications. 

Marco Donati has worked with UN civil affairs for more than 20 years and is the Civil Affairs Team Lead in New York. During this time he worked as a UN Civil Affairs Officer in Haiti, the DRC and Kosovo.

Lisa Schirch has 30 years of experience in peacebuilding research, policy advocacy, practice, and teaching. A political scientist by training, she earned her PhD in 1989 from George Mason University’s Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. Schirch’s most recent book, Social Media Impacts on Conflict and Democracy: The Tech-tonic Shift (Routledge, 2021) features thirteen local case studies from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The book maps how digital technologies drive “social climate change,” including polarization, extremist anti-immigrant, and anti-minority purity narratives. Schirch’s current research focuses on the positive roles of technology in “peacetech” and “digital peacebuilding.” She is a senior research fellow with the Toda Peace Institute, where she coordinates with civil society and technology companies to experiment and innovate new technologies that can scale social cohesion.

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Ubleha for idiots

  • Internacionalac

    Engl. An international. Commonly known as a foreigner but that’s not the way it is used in polite speech (See). S/he is a guest in the land of the locals (See) wishing to contribute to the development of democracy (See) and enhance human rights (See). Has read at a minimum one book or at least the more important chapters on the history of B&H or even the entire region of South-East Europe. Has got money. Gladly takes other internationals out to dinners whenever s/he can charge it to the budget of a project (See). S/he likes the locals and considers them to be her/his equal, to be de facto equalized to her/him. And the locals love her/him, too. S/he knows how to say GOOD DAY, THANK YOU and NO PROBLEM in local languages of which s/he is very proud.  A vegetarian, a feminist, a non-smoker and not a racist; s/he points that out very often and is not ashamed of it at all.  Additionally, s/he thinks that war criminals should be brought to justice in Den Haag. In general, a happy character. See: expert. Translator's note: BSC form of an English word „International“ when taken from English and adjusted gramatically to BSC language.

from Ubleha for Idiots – An Absolutely non useful Guide for Civil Society Building and Project management for Locals and Internationals in BiH and Beyond by Nebojša Šavija-Valha and Ranko Milanovic-Blank, ALBUM No. 20, 2004, Sarajevo, translated by Marina Vasilj.