Three decades after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is still no agreement on a single approach towards victims, even in such cases when victims were only innocent children. The relationship towards memorials dedicated to children victims of war also illustrates this devastating reality.      Author: Miljan Kovač Memorials do exist in several cities, however, apart from rare cases, […]

Do we have enough colour and courage to literally and metaphorically – paint over the nineties? Many publications have been published, research conducted, debates held, and numerous media stories have been told about the wars of the 1990s in the area of the community called Yugoslavia and the war crimes committed there. However, a special phenomenon has appeared on the […]

Thirty years after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, peace education is proving to be an ever greater necessity. Although formal education is not focused on this, non-governmental organisations, sometimes in collaboration with institutions, have long taken the initiative and realised that they will guide the next literate generations through social change. However, assuming there are thousands of young people […]

On Tuesday, 25 August 1992, at around 11 pm, over thirty shells had already struck the 98-year-old Sarajevo City Hall building. A massive fire broke out, consuming the testimonies of the past of the peoples of Yugoslavia, of knowledge and skills, witnesses of eras. ”If there had been water, or if the firefighters had managed to arrive sooner, the City […]

The denial of war crimes, the glorification of perpetrators, and the manipulation of facts have become part of the digital and media space – how to fight against it? Although international and domestic courts have established facts about war crimes, genocide, and other forms of violence, narratives that deny, relativize, or distort those facts continue to spread on social media. […]

Three decades after the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to face the consequences of an incomplete process of facing its past. Although the war has ended and institutions formally function, society remains burdened by mistrust, differing interpretations of the war legacy, and frequent political misuse of issues that ought to be the subject of responsible and careful public debate. In […]

Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the most serious ”dark tourism” destinations on the planet. The remnants of the war and crimes committed, including the genocide in Srebrenica, have placed our country high on the list of destinations appealing to tourists seeking something different than the traditional ”sun, sea and sand” holiday.  Author: Sanela Karaica To begin with, let us […]

When bombs fell on universities in Gaza, they did not just destroy buildings – they targeted the future. Nadia Sonneveld, an associate professor and legal anthropologist at Leiden University, together with a group of colleagues and students from the Netherlands and Palestine, has spent the past two years documenting this destruction in the framework of the project Picturing Scholasticide – […]

Thirty years on from Dayton does not feel like a celebration to me, but rather a quiet reminder as to how long we have been standing halfway. It seems like a state of prolonged breath in which we formally live in peace, yet we have never fully emerged from the war, because the past continuously catches up with us, and […]

The Government of Republika Srpska has been organising a central commemoration event dedicated to victims of Jasenovac and the Independent State of Croatia* over the past twenty years in Donja Gradina, the largest site of suffering of the Ustasha concentration camp Jasenovac. This was the case on April 27 of this year, too. Author: Milkica Milojević As always, the President […]

Thirty-three years have passed since the crimes committed in Grabovica (Kotor Varoš). The families of tortured, missing and killed persons are still facing an institutional barrier: they are prohibited from visiting the site of killing and last whereabouts of their family members.   The decision taken at the end of October by the Police Station Kotor Varoš details the reasons […]

Built at the beginning of the 16th century, completely destroyed at the beginning of the war in the 1990s, the Dugalića Mosque at the centre of Nevesinje was reconstructed.   Author: Miljan Kovač The last in a series of 12 destroyed mosques in this municipality should be officially opened as soon as the next summer. Final works are underway.   […]