No Love in a Hostile Climate - The Divided Balkans

Travnik in Bosnia and Herzegovina: a fence divides the school playground with Bosnian Muslims on one side and Bosnian Croats on the other. The school building is also ethnically divided. Two decades ago, neighbors shot at neighbors here. Even today the consequences of the war are still visible, omnipresent in the interpersonal relationships.

Amela is a Muslim. She went to school in Travnik and grew up with this segregation. Contacts between the different ethnic groups are not encouraged, even during school break times. Bosnia's constitutional court declared the "two schools under one roof policy" unconstitutional in 2012. But this policy is still practiced in everyday life, even though nobody calls it that anymore. It's not just in schools that the distance between the ethnic groups is visible. The parents also foster ethnic segregation from their neighbors. It's always been this way - Amela will of course marry a Muslim.

The country is home to Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs. They say they live together but on closer inspection they just live side by side. Very few would accept a spouse from a different ethnic group