The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

lav public opinion aware of the possible developments toward war – albeit
without success. Moreover, many women’s groups refused to let
themselves be split apart along nationalistic lines, but continued to maintain
contact during and after the war, and organized self-help projects
for peace-building. Thanks to this work, the victims of rape and mistreat -
ment gained the courage to publicly describe their experiences before
the Court in The Hague, and thus to contribute to the condemnation of
sexual violence in conflicts and wars as a war crime by the UN.
Only when the massacre of Muslim men from Srebrenica became
known, after, in the spring of 1995, a shell had killed eighty young people
in a disco in Sarajevo, was international public opinion ready to accept
military intervention. That was the only way this insanity could have been
stopped at that point. Yet that would have been possible long before
1989, and even late, long after the war had started. It would have been
possible to alleviate the economic difficulties by cooperation. It would
also have been possible to address the perhaps unstoppable process of
secession, and thus to control it, so as to prevent a war of everybody
against everybody. But all this is speculation, with no basis in reality.
The result of this war was the breakup of former Yugoslavia into new
small nation-states, and ethnic cleansing. Ethno-nationalism is still massively
present. While Bosnia-Herzegovina has formally been preserved
as a unit, it is in fact split into Serbian and Croatian-Bosnian parts. Kosovo
is still a trouble spot. Many refugees have been unable to return to their
homes, due to the ethnic cleansing. The wounds of war are still fester -
ing, even sixteen years after the end of the fighting.
Peace work during the war and since the end of the fighting has been
concentrated on re-establishing the dignity of people by means of
trauma work and many often small projects for the reestablishment of
an acceptable socio-cultural climate. Of particular importance is the work
of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The legal proceedings
against those responsible for the war are important; so, too, is the identification
of those murdered at Srebrenica, so that the survivors can carry
out a mourning process. Being able to mourn is the basis for healing the
wounds of war – as is the acceptance of guilt and of its consequences.
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