Peace Scholar Completes Her Masters Degree

 
At our meeting on June 27, Jelena Starcevic spoke about all of the activities that kept her busy as she completed her Masters degree in Peace and Conflict Resolution as a Peace scholar at USD.  Jelena is a trained lawyer in her home country, Serbia. Before coming to San Diego for her studies here she workd in the area of employment law.  She explained how her studies will benefit her is being able to recognize what causes conflicts and how to get the parties to a dispute to work toward a resolution of a dispute by identifying the actual issues that are causing the problem.  She explained that often the perceived issues are not the real issues.  Often distrust and side issues cause the problem to escalate.  When the proper questions are asked and the parties can begin to understand each other, solutions can be found to solve the dispute in ways that benefit both parties. 
 
Jelena said she was surprised that so few lawyers were involved in learning how to resolve conflict and work toward peaceful solutions.  Jelena sent a copy of her remarks and you can download her presentation as a Word document by clicking on this link - Jelena's Peace Scholar presentation.
Past District Governor Carl Kruse awarded a Torchbearer  for Peace Certificate as she held a 1984 Olympic Torch. 
 
Jelena Starcevic, Rotary Peace Scholar, spoke at the December 13, 2016 RB Sunrise Rotary Club breakfast meeting.  Jelena is from Serbia and is a candidate for MA in Peacebuilding at the University of San Diego Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies.  She is a legal expert with over 10 years of experience in labor and employment policies of South East European countries, impacting labor legislation, migration and promotion of employment of disadvantaged groups.
Jelena started out by giving a brief overview of Serbia. Serbia is situated at crossroads of Central and Southern Europe; it has around 7 million inhabitants with majority of ethnic Serbs (83,3%), Hungarians, Roma, Bosniaks and other ethnic groups. Predominant religion is Serbian Orthodox, followed by Roman Catholics and Islam.
 
Serbians came to the Balkans in VI century where they formed a kingdom recognized by both Byzantine and Roma in 1217. With the Ottoman expansion in mid XVI century Serbian kingdom fell under its authority until early XIX century. After a long struggle to gain independence again, Serbian kingdom was internationally recognized as an independent country at Berlin Congress in 1878. After WWI, till present times there were various formations of unions of all southern Slav tribes (Kingdom of Yugoslavia between two world wars and Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia after the WWII till 1990s).
 
At the beginning of the 19th century, it became the Kingdom of Serbia under the Ottoman Empire and in 1978, it became independent.  After the First World War until 1990, the country was an independent nation made up of Slavic people, and after World War II, the combined states became Yugoslavia.
 
Today, Serbia is a parliamentary republic and a EU membership candidate since 2012. The country is acceding to the WTO and is a militarily neutral state. Serbia is an upper-middle income economy with dominant service sector, followed by the industrial sector and agriculture. 
 
Jelena spoke about her life journey, being born in 1981, one year after Tito died.  Tito's death was the beginning of the end for Yugoslavia.  She had a pretty happy childhood until the 1990s when all of the troubles began.  During the 1990s Serbia was going through a period of civil unrest, political and student demonstration, sanction, inflation, shortage of basic life provisions, culminating in 1999 with the three-month long bombing.
 
Growing up as a teenager under these conditions made Jelena want to become a lawyer to bring democracy and rule of law. After finishing law school, she specialized in European Union law contributing to efforts of her country to become an EU member state. She has spent over ten years working in field of labor and employment, strengthening the social dialogue and social cohesion. She took that experience and knowledge to aid strengthening the social dialogue in neighboring Bosnia and Hercegovina working as a key legal expert on EU funded project.
 
She finished law school and specialized in European Union law.  She wanted to use that knowledge for the betterment of her country and worked in the European Commission.  Just before coming to the United States, she worked on a social dialogue enhancement project as a legal expert in Bosnia.
 
Understanding how social and economic conditions and lack of dialogue and cohesion can set a stage for violent conflicts she came to United States to study conflict resolution and peacebuilding. During her studies, she focused on social inequalities, development models and refugees, especially the European migrant crisis but also organizations that are helping refugees here in San Diego.
 
Jelena thanked the RB Sunrise Rotary Club for supporting her in her year at USD and hoped to meet more of us in the Club.