In a time when political instability shakes the very foundations of our society once again and the public space is increasingly flooded with fear and divisions, I ask myself what it means to be a peace activist today. Our past relentlessly reminds us of the fact that peace is not something to be taken for granted. In the current political […]

As one of the nearest cities to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s border with Serbia, Bijeljina was the perfect test site for war plans and crimes that were about to engulf the rest of the country. Everything that was happening in and around Bijeljina in April 1992 was replicated throughout the Podrinje region over the ensuing months and years. Everything started at […]

On March 26, 1992, a massacre was committed in Sijekovac near Bosanski Brod by armed groups that later on joined the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), together with other members of Croatian military formations, including the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS). The attack on this village led to the death of Serb civilians and destruction of their homes. Several persons were taken […]

Criminal justice constitutes a fundamental element of transitional justice and provides a sound basis for facing the past, building trust within communities and eventually also reconciliation. Final rulings play a key role in this context, since they confirm the responsibility of perpetrators, provide a certain satisfaction to victims and their families and send a clear message about the unacceptability of […]

Reflexion faite (‘reflecting on the past’) is an easy discursive formula for a rather complex problem. But all this reduced presentation at first glance, hides the solution of this conceptual knot. Reflecting on the past opens the door to the two central concepts of this cycle of articles: memory and history. We will not read these concepts in their vernacular […]

“All this happening after the war is what is the hardest thing for me. Why do we, ordinary people who are not in politics, hate each other (Not everyone!) so much? Why are they not being convinced that we should hate those who made us hate each other, to kill each other? (…) They [the politicians] agreed well on how […]

Thirty years have passed… Never has the past hit the present head-on like this year. For the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, we came to Sarajevo, us, some fifty foreign journalists and photographers who had shared with the Sarajevan’s those dark hours of the history of Bosnia and eye witnessed the return of […]