The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

much of history remains alive in the present. People are different, always
and everywhere. They belong to different groups and religions. But is that
a reason to wage wars?
With this article, I would like to spark curiosity and raise new questions. I
hope that you will do it too; join with me until we understand why people
abandon a time of peace and transformation for a time of wars. It is a
common task of all people to strengthen peace and to prevent wars.
The ancient history of humankind in south-eastern Europe
Thanks to its mild climate, the Balkan Peninsula was inhabited by humans
even during the last Ice Age, fourteen to sixteen thousand years
ago. After the Ice Age, some people emigrated northwards; others came
and settled here. As their numbers grew, they fought over territory. The
winners and the losers intermingled.
The Greeks developed the cradle of European civilization here. The Romans
did the same in their time. Their empire fell apart into Roman and
Byzantine segments along the present border between Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Serbia. After 1054, the church leaders in the Byzantine part
no longer wanted to subordinate themselves to the Pope in Rome; they
split off and developed the Orthodox variety of Christianity. In the West,
in the Catholic areas, humanism, the Renaissance, the Reformation and
the Counter-Reformation all developed; in the east, the Orthodox Church
remained tied to the ideal of harmony between church and state – and
has to this day.
The Roman Empire succumbed to the pressure of the Great Migration.
New states, large and small, came into being, including a Croatian and
a Serbian kingdom, only to disappear again in the rise of larger empires.
Slovenia and Croatia became part of the Habsburg monarchy; the other
parts of Balkans were conquered by the Ottomans in the fourteenth century.
The Ottomans pushed forward to the borders of the Habsburg Empire
– today’s border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina –
and remained there for 500 years. Refugees from Serbia who belonged
to the Orthodox Church were settled in the Habsburg borderlands. They
were given tax advantages, like the Catholic population there, in return
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