Five days after a 38-year-old woman, who had previously been abused, was killed in Gradacac in the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the residents say that this tragedy is proof that the system in BiH does not trust the victims, while the reaction is often absent or comes late.
Every third woman in BiH is a victim of violence, and every second woman over the age of 15 has experienced some form of psychological, economic, or physical abuse, according to data from the Agency for Gender Equality in BiH.
Nizama Hecimovic from Gradacac was also a victim of domestic violence, who reported her ex-husband to the police for abuse at the beginning of August.
On August 11th, her ex-husband beat her and then killed her, and he broadcast the murder live on Instagram. In addition to his partner, Nermin Sulejmanovic killed two other people on the same day, while wounding three others.
Victims do not trust institutions
There are eight safe houses in BiH with a total of 200 places available for victims of violence.
Mubera Lemes, director of the safe house in Sarajevo, emphasized that violence in most cases is still not reported because the victims do not trust the institutions.
“A woman is in the greatest danger the moment she decides to leave a violent relationship. That is why it is very difficult for her to decide to report abuse. She would be encouraged to report abuse if she trusted the institutions, and that will happen if the institutions do their job to protect the victim. Do the victims trust the institutions? No, they don’t,” says Lemes.
The United Nations (UN) General Assembly twice in the past years passed resolutions on measures against violence against women and girls. The resolutions pointed to the alarming scale of murders of women, including the fact that every second woman was killed by a partner or family member, Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
