Swedish students bring OSCE message to global audience

When two resourceful high school students from Sweden, Märtha Rehnberg and Sara Holmberg, were studying the role of international organizations in regional and global affairs, they decided to abandon more traditional methods and produce a documentary instead — about the OSCE.

In November 2006, the two 18-year-olds arrived in Vienna to begin shooting footage at two principal locations: the OSCE Secretariat and the Hofburg Congress Centre. The number of key personalities who appear in the film is a testament to the high degree of co-operation they were able to secure.

But Märtha and Sara wanted their film to reflect more than just the political dialogue that takes place in the comfortable surroundings of the Austrian capital. They were also keen to illustrate the value of the OSCE’s practical work on the ground, preferably in one of the countries where the Organization is helping to heal the scars of war.

So a few days later, accompanied by Ambassador Krister Bringéus, then the Head of the Swedish Delegation to the OSCE, the two students set off for Belgrade, where the Organization has been present since 2000. Neither had ever been to the Balkans before, and their fascination is reflected in the haunting images of some of the devastation caused by the conflict eight years earlier.

“We were too young to understand what was being taught to us in school about the wars in the region,” Märtha said. “Driving by ruined buildings and taking a close look at a bombed television tower on top of the Fruška Gora mountains made recent history all too real for us.”

Märtha and Sara toured the elegant early twentieth-century villa that serves as the Belgrade offices of the OSCE Mission to Serbia, interviewed its Head, Ambassador Hans Ola Urstad from Norway, and met some of the Mission’s more than 170 staff members.

They then headed north to Sremska Kamenica in the northern province of Vojvodina, where interviews with students and instructors revealed how a €2.7 million OSCE project was transforming the old police high school into a modern and fully-equipped Basic Police Training Centre.

“We used to work with kids, but from now on, we will be dealing with adults, which involves using completely different methods,” police trainer Sandor Horvath from Hungary.

Their final stop was the War Crimes Chamber of the Belgrade District Court and the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office. Siniša Važić, President of the Court, showed Märtha and Sara around the courtroom and described how the OSCE’s contribution towards reforming Serbia’s judicial system was raising public awareness of war crime trials.

A huge hall complete with bullet-proof glass to protect witnesses did not look any different from courts in western capitals, the two students thought.

Vladimir Vukčević, Special War Crimes Prosecutor, explained that the War Crimes Chamber was dedicated to bringing perpetrators of war crimes to justice and that it was working as hard as the ICTY –– the  International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague –– in handling  each case as professionally as possible. “The biggest challenge is fighting the negative media campaign against the court, which threatens to seriously undermine its public image,” he said.

Back in Sweden a few days later, it was time for Märtha and Sara to face the challenging task of editing the footage into a finished product. The resulting 23-minute documentary includes commentary in Swedish with English subtitles.

“This film is an effort to make people in Sweden understand the importance of the OSCE and how its work is making a difference in Serbia,” Sara said.

But, although several of the featured officials were Swedish, Märtha and Sara realized that the film’s message should be shared with more than just a home audience. To make the documentary available to the rest of the world, they decided to divide it into three segments and post it on YouTube, the popular “broadcast yourself” video-sharing website.

Watch the three-part documentary here.

Graham Patterson, Website Editor, Press and Public Information Section, OSCE Secretariat, and Igor Maltaric and Dinka Zivalj, former staff members in the OSCE Mission to Serbia, contributed to this story.

Photo: Märtha Rehnberg (right) and Sara Holmberg

Milan Obradovic/OSCE