Up to 50,000 women were raped during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The stigma and silence around sexual violence means that their suffering has continued long after the end of the conflict. A joint initiative by the British Embassy and civil society hopes to change this.
By Tim Bidey
Last week saw the launch of a week of activity in cities across Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), aimed at increasing widespread awareness of the ‘Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative’. The initiative is working to replace the culture of impunity for crimes of sexual violence in conflict with one of deterrence, and was launched in 2012 by the former UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and the Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie.
Bosnia is a country that has long borne witness to such crime. An estimated 20,000-50,000 Bosniak, Serb, and Croat women were raped during the 1992-95 war. However, the cessation of hostilities did little to ease victims’ suffering. To this day, publicly identifying oneself as either a victim or survivor of sexual violence continues to carry such a high social stigma that admission to can cause family abandonment, isolation, and economic and social marginalization. As such, many women are too afraid to come forward and seek professional support, forcing them to endure alone the effects of the crimes perpetrated against them.
It’s within this context that the British Embassy in Sarajevo, the OSCE Mission to BiH, the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC), the Peace Support Operations Training Centre, Medica Zenica, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), and others, have planned a public awareness week. It aims to respond to the landscape of stigma and silence, and comes in the wake of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, which was held in London last June. The week will bring representatives together from key public institutions, civil society organisations, academia, and the media to increase awareness of the prevention and consequences of sexual violence in conflict, as well as the need to support survivors effectively.
The beginning of the week is marked by today’s launch of the ‘International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict’ in BiH. Funded by the UK government, and the product of two years’ work by a range of experts, the document was presented at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in June 2014, and is seen as an essential step towards achieving the Initiative’s aims. By introducing international standards for the documentation and investigation of sexual violence, in addition to the support of survivors, the Protocol aims to strengthen the prosecution of sexual violence in conflicts, thus increasing the prospects of successful convictions. As such, it provides practical advice on preventing, documenting, and responding to sexual violence, including checklists, templates for data collection, and sample questions for fieldworkers.
With such a strong focus within the protocol on developing the capacity of local individuals, organisations, and institutions, a focal point of the launch event in the Parliament of BiH will be the official presentation of three separate training modules by local experts. The future delivery of these modules will serve as the basis for improving the work of judges and prosecutors, war crimes investigators, and the armed forces in BiH, and are intended to help them overcome some of the many challenges that they face in preventing and responding to sexual violence as a crime under international law.
(Source: transconflict.com)
