Bosnia and Herzegovina

In times of secular advancement, religious organisations began with widespread creation of common ground for a defence of religious and spiritual values worldwide. Ecumenism and interreligious dialogue became a norm for almost every denomination and world religion, focused on theological discussions, forms of unity, religious diplomacy and religious peacebuilding and humanitarian aid. Religious institutions act as an important societal stakeholder and clergy enjoys authority and legitimacy in an overwhelming number of countries. This comes as an important addition to peacebuilding efforts in post-conflict societies, particularly if those societies are multi-ethnic and multi-religious. Such cases can be seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, and many other places in the world where religion is being misused for political and nationalistic goals. Empirical research of such activities should also focus on spoilers in those processes. Spoilers are persons or institutions who believe that peace emerging from negotiations or dialogue threatens their power, worldview and interests, while violence, negative peace, status quo or lack of initiatives are used to undermine achievements of peacebuilding. In a religious sense, many spoilers think of ecumenical and interreligious tendencies as a betrayal of key values or disadvantage of their position in society. Spoilers may seem very interested in peace processes, they may be part of interreligious councils and play a role in various initiatives, but are insincere in their commitments, have various strategies and tactics to avoid true reconciliation and may have been positioned from their respective institutions. This paper is a result of in-depth research of interreligious peacebuilding initiatives in the Bosnia and Herzegovina and suggests ways to discover spoilers and challenges local communities face with them in the process.

The Balkans, in a specific sense, refers to the collection of countries in Southeast Europe that gained independence following the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, most of which are on the path to membership in the European Union. The Balkans, with its great ethnic diversity, is the intersection of three religions: Islam, Catholic Christianity, and Orthodox Christianity, and regarding its historical background, it is considered a crisis-prone area next to the European Union. Iran has long-standing deep cultural ties with the countries of this region, and the Persian language has historically held significant appeal among the intellectuals of this area. However, undoubtedly, Iran's presence and role in the Bosnian crisis during the 1990s is considered the most significant involvement of Iran in this part of Europe. The present study aims to explore the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Balkans region, emphasizing Iran's role in Bosnia. The results indicated that the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Balkans is consistent with the constructivist approach in international relations, and this region possesses considerable potential in cultural, political, and economic fields for the development of relations.