Conflicts and wars never and nowhere happen accidentally, although their motives and justifications might seem sudden, hasty and completely banal. No matter how much peace advocates are appalled by this fact, wars have their internal logic, they are deliberate, even in those cases when we believe that complete psychopaths initiate them. It is important to keep in mind the truth […]

The maps of region, which used to show the borders of the former common state Yugoslavia, are now full of thick lines marking the borders of independent states as well as thin lines marking their internal units (entities, cantons, regions). Dilemmas are still present in case of the thickness of the line framing Kosovo and it is uncertain whether such […]

CONCEPT The concept of transitional justice emerged from the international human rights movement and became popular in the last two decades. Initially, the term transitional justice referred to the judicial processing of human rights violations committed by dictatorial regimes during transition to a democratic society. Lately, the term transitional justice has begun referring to the prosecution of war crimes and […]

In May 2016, the media throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina published an ”unbelievable” piece of news: a group of students of the Secondary Vocational School ”Jajce” went out into the streets of the small Central Bosnia town, which has an almost identical proportion of Bosniaks and Croats, with very few persons defining themselves as belonging to other categories, connected the flags […]

Just as during all other years, the recent news about the 26th anniversary of the beginning of siege of Bihać region went unnoticed. It was mentioned only briefly in the local media. The first associations that I have in case of such anniversaries and memories of the siege are shrapnels that missed me by a few centimetres, exploding shells, deaths […]

”Why should we be writing about it, there is nothing new there… as compared to others. Montenegro basically has not participated in the war at all”, said a colleague recently, an experienced journalist who works for a high-circulation daily newspaper, while answering the question why war crimes, in case of which light has never been fully shed on and which […]

Photo: Rade Vilimonović At the moment of publication of the EU Progress Report for Serbia in which Serbia was requested, among other things, to ”demonstrate stronger commitment to the resolution of the war crimes legacy and foster mutual trust and reconciliation”, there was an ongoing verbal war between Serbian and Croatian politicians. By reacting to a provocation of the Defence Minister, […]

There is a vast number of reasons for a text with such a headline, because such reasons appear on an almost daily basis. We could have written about all of this also following the Mladić judgment, just as we could have done so after the judgments in case of officials of Herzeg-Bosnia or Šešelj.

I was in Ahmići (Bosnia and Herzegovina) with around twenty activists from human rights organisations from Croatia, and then we also honoured the victims in Trusina (Bosnia and Herzegovina). There was a warm welcome in Ahmići, and the local population’s message was as follows: ”You were brave to come here. We thank you for sharing our pain.”

Most people have an opportunity at some point in their life to learn about history as a science of the past which, among other things, focuses on people and everything people did, created and left behind as a legacy. Every secondary school or university student will say that history is life’s torturer rather than teacher, because in our educational system, […]

The war in Kosovo started at the beginning of 1998 as the bloody end of a long political crisis in Kosovo, which paralysed the life in the former southern Serbian province, especially following the rise of Slobodan Milošević to power at the end of 1980s. After several unsuccessful diplomatic initiatives of the international community to end the conflict between the […]

As you walk the street of Kosovo, it is easy to compile a booklet with a variety of men’s names given to these streets. The blue street signs seem to be by chance in harmony with the stereotype that blue is the colour of men. Whereas streets named after women could perhaps fill an A5 page. Statues, memorials, sites, parks, […]