The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

day, a man said, “Once you’ve said something, you don’t have to do it
anymore.” Thereafter, the issue was discussed that in crisis situations,
people look away in order to survive. By expressing what they had suffered
in speaking about hate and revenge, they were able to create a
link between their identity as a victim and their identity before the war,
and draw strength from that for their future.
Personally dealing with one’s experiences from the war means not only
ending the nightmares, but also developing trust in human society. Indeed,
this is the basic precondition for a process from which a personal
and societal capacity for peace and nonviolence can emerge. This is true
both for the victims and for the perpetrators.
In Berlin, the people faced not only what they had experienced, but also
concern about what was happening here in Germany. For years, the ref -
ugees were in a state of social and legal limbo, victimized by expulsion
policies, and humiliated. That turned the trauma chronic for many of
them.
It was important that there were people like Protestant Bishop Wolfgang
Huber and Catholic Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky, who, at the initiative of
Südost Europa Kultur e.V., called for a round table on Bosnian refugees.
Representatives of counselling centres, Members of Parliament and administrative
officials participated. Reports were received from experts
from Bosnia, from former Bremen Mayor Hans Koschnick, the EU’s representative
in Bosnia, and also from German soldiers. As a result, the
repatriation of traumatized individuals was suspended, and in 2000, the
conference of German state ministers of the interior decided that traumatized
people could stay.
The refugees needed therapy, but they also needed support in a political
struggle for legal security just as much. In order to regain their trust in
humankind, they needed the right to an education and to work – in other
words, human rights.
Therapy work was only a part of what was built up at südost. There were
various counselling opportunities, educational projects, political events, con -
gresses, exchanges of therapists etc. The same rooms in which so much
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