The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

The history of Yugoslavia has been marked by imperial conflicts, starting
with that between the Eastern and Western Roman empires, and later
between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. It has also been torn apart
by ethnic and religious conflicts. In the fourteenth century, the Ottomans
introduced Islam into their area of rule, while the areas subordinate to
the Habsburgs were Catholic, and the Serbian areas remained attached
to the Byzantine tradition of Orthodox Christianity. In the nineteenth century,
nationalism emerged in Croatia and Serbia, giving rise to powerful
movements for inde pendence. After the fall of the Habsburg Empire in
the First World War, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was
created in 1918. The Croats and Serbs waged a continuing battle over
their historic justifications and their national identities, while other elements
of the population were ignored.
“In the discussion about territorial claims, the right of national self-determi -
nation was frequently projected into the past. In the minds of the nationa -
lists, the nations had already existed in their respective medieval king doms.
They derived their territorial claims from pre-Ottoman times, and demanded
the restoration of their historic rights.” (Report, p. 74).
After Yugoslavia was invaded by Germany in 1941, during the Second
World War, Croatian nationalists proclaimed an independent state and,
at Hitler’s instructions, murdered the Jewish and Roma population. There -
after, according to the plan, a third of the Serbian population of Croatia,
especially the men, were to be murdered, a third were to be deported,
and the remaining third, primarily women and children, were to be converted
to Catholicism. But the royalist Serbs, too, committed massacres
against the Croatian and Muslim populations. The Croatian-Serbian war
which took place during this period was carried out with great brutality
on both sides.
In accordance with a resolution by the Comintern, which wanted to tie
up the German army in the Balkans, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia
in 1941 organized the anti-German resistance. “The Communists prop -
agated equal rights for all peoples and also federalism; they were disciplined,
and introduced strict ethical and moral rules, and unlike their
opponents, respected the property of the people. This won them the
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