Source: http://www.balkaninsight.com/ Wartime Sarajevo-based correspondent Kevin Sullivan’s new novel The Longest Winter tries to reflect the humanity and courage of people living in the Bosnian capital during the 1992-95 siege. Eleanor Rose BIRN Sarajevo The Grbavica district of Sarajevo just after the war. Photo: US Defence Department. In Kevin Sullivan’s living room, there is a framed photograph of himself lying in a debris-strewn road in […]

Izvor: www.balkaninsight.com Eleanor Rose, BIRN, Sarajevo Despite funding setbacks and broken promises of support, the War Childhood Museum will open in Sarajevo in December to exhibit people’s personal mementoes of growing up during the conflict, its director says.  Jasminko Halilovic is tired. Face taut, he admits he is working 16- to 18-hour days in the run-up to the opening of the War Childhood […]

Source: http://www.balkaninsight.com/ Natalia Zaba BIRN Belgrade When director Gazmend Bajri met the subject of his latest film, he found an outlet for his feelings about how he himself suffered during the Kosovo war – and how he dealt with the trauma afterwards.  Gazmend Bajri might use other people’s experiences in his films, but his understanding of how they think and feel is based […]

Source: http://www.balkandiskurs.com/ By Mladen Lakić “I didn’t feel any support or empathy or hear someone say, ‘I’m sorry’. No! I heard many people say, ‘She got what she asked for.’ That hurts.” “If I had stayed there, in Bosnia, I wouldn’t have had an even remotely normal life,” says MR, a women victim of rape during the war. When the […]

http://www.balkaninsight.com/​ Elameri Skrgic Mikulic BIRN Sarajevo More than 1,000 women in Bosnia and Herzegovina who suffered sexual violence during the 1990s conflict cannot become mothers because of serious psychological traumas and the medical consequences of being raped. “The truth is that they killed my youth. The truth is that I lost my home and marriage. Yes, they took my unborn child. The […]

http://www.balkaninsight.com/ BIRN’s Kosovo War Film Screened at Sarajevo University Sarajevo University’s law and political sciences faculties screened BIRN’s documentary ‘The Unidentified’, about the Serbian fighters responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Kosovo war in 1999. Ajla Gezo BIRN Sarajevo  ‘The Unidentified’, which investigates attacks on Kosovo villages in 1999 and names those involved in an attempted cover-up […]

Source: recom.link For a new exhibition in Pristina, Dutch photographer Willem Poelstra used his own parents’ story as a starting point to show the long-term impact of the 1990s war on ordinary people in Kosovo. When Willem Poelstra, the son of a Jewish mother and a Dutch father who worked for a German company during World War II, first visited […]

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ Jasminko Halilovic Author of War Childhood and Founder of the War Childhood Museum Tensions in the Balkans have reached a height not seen in the region since the end of the war in Kosovo in 1999. At the same time, we are building a museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina to promote peace. Are we as naive as […]

Source: ictj.org Roger Duthie and Paul Seils As the refugee crisis deepens, does action on transitional justice issues have to wait for peace? A new paper explores what sort of consultation and documentation work can be done now, while conflict is ongoing, to shape outcomes moving forward. As many European countries were beginning to emerge from the depths of the […]

Source: http://www.balkaninsight.com/   War victims are launching an appeal in The Hague, calling for the Netherlands to be held responsible for the deaths of all the Bosniaks from Srebrenica who were killed in July 1995. Denis Dzidic, BIRN, Sarajevo The Mothers of Srebrenica and Zepa Enclaves victims’ group will launch an appeal on Thursday in The Hague against a 2014 verdict […]

Source: recom.link Author: Nadim Khoury In the last twenty years the concept of political reconciliation has gained currency amongst political and social theorists. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the democratic transitions of several South American countries and other similar cases introduced this seemingly foreign concept to our contemporary political lexicon. Reconciliation typically refers to attempts for divided societies […]

Source: recom.link By Refik Hodzic, ICTJ “We’ve gotten used to the conflict; and that habit has created a vicious situation in which many prefer the certainty of war – with its clear rules and predictable risks, with the dead being a burden for others, with its hate routines and well-defined enemies – than the uncertainty of peace. The decision ahead […]