June 19 is marked each year by the United Nations as the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict in an attempt to raise awareness of the need to put an end to conflict-related sexual violence, and to honour the victims.

Two decades after the wars in the Balkans, progress has been made in introducing legislation to support victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo and in prosecuting perpetrators for their crimes, but more still needs to be done, experts told BIRN.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: slow justice

As in other countries in the former Yugoslavia, there are no confirmed figures for the number of the number of people who were raped during the war, but estimates have ranged from 20,000 to 50,000.

One of the main problems facing survivors of wartime sexual violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina is that country has so far failed to adopt a state-level law on the Protection of Victims of Torture, which would provide financial assistance, help with rehabilitation and other benefits.

Both of the country’s two entities, the Serb-led Republika Srpska and the Bosniak- and Croat-dominated Federation of Bosnia, do have similar laws of their own, but both have significant drawbacks.

Murat Tahirovic, president of the Victims and Witnesses of Genocide association, told BIRN that the current situation does not help all the victims in either entity.

“Any law on the entity level, in Republika Srpska or in the Federation, will always exclude some war victims, as only those who live in the entity itself can benefit, not those who left [as a result of the war] and have not returned,” Tahirovic said.

Before 2015, the Bosnian state court did not award any damages to survivors, and to date, there have been only 13 such judgments. The amounts awarded so far range from around 5,000 to 30,000 euros, according to the NGO TRIAL International.

A large number of people seeking compensation have been told by the courts to initiate civil proceedings by themselves

However, civil suits place victims in an unfavourable position – unlike in criminal proceedings, they have no right to anonymity, they can be traumatised again by the court process, and they have to pay lawyers, said a report by TRIAL International.

Sabiha Husic, director of the Medica Zenica NGO, which provides assistance to victims of wartime rape and other forms of violence, pointed out that social stigmas still deter survivors from claiming compensation in court.

“Very few have the courage to engage in legal processes and ensure that justice is served,” Husic told BIRN.

According to entity laws, victims receive a monthly pension, similar to disabled or unemployed people. However, a large number of them are not covered by the legislation.

Republika Srpska, for example, rejects all claims filed after 2007, and the legislation in the entity requires that people prove they sustained physical injuries. The status of a ‘civilian victim of war’ is granted only to people with “60 per cent damage to the organism”, the Republika Srpska law says.

The Federation law also requires evidence that victims are 60 per cent disabled, but provides an explicit exception to survivors of sexual violence and does not impose the time constraints for filing claims that exist in Republika Srpska.

The War Victims Law in Republika Srpska provides a maximum of around 150 euros a month, and in most of the cases less, in benefits for those who survived wartime sexual violence or torture, but campaigners argue that the legislation is only being patchily implemented.

“The administrations in some municipalities are not doing their job properly, and victims are upset,” Bozica Zivkovic Railic, the president of the Women – Victims of War association, told BIRN last month.

In the Federation entity, according to NGO data, some 800 people have the status of a victim of wartime rape, receiving some 280 euros a month or slightly more, plus the right to free medical care. Some have also been given apartments to live in.

“The state must be take over responsibility for those who survived wartime violence, to show them it recognises their sufferings, but we are seeing that is not happening,” Jasna Zecevic, the president of Viva Zene Tuzla organisation, which operates a centre for therapy and rehabilitation.

Male victims of wartime rape or any sexual violence have rarely spoken in public, and few NGOs provide them with assistance.

In recent years, the number of trials in Bosnia involving charges of sexual violence has increased, and they currently account for approximately 30 per cent of all war crime cases.

In most of the trials for wartime rape, defendants who are found guilty have been sentenced to between two and five years in prison.

Meanwhile it is estimated that it will take some ten years before all the remaining cases are completed by the Bosnian courts.

Croatia: a ‘symbolic apology’

At a protest in Vukovar in Croatia in October 2018 about slow progress in prosecuting war crimes, a banner quotes Nadia Murad, a Yezidi activist against wartime sexual violence: “I want to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine.” Photo: Beta.

In 2015, the Croatian parliament passed the first law in the country that recognises rape as a war crime – the Law on the Rights of Victims of Sexual Violence during the Military Aggression against the Republic of Croatia in the Homeland War.

The legislation, which is overseen by the Croatian War Veterans’ Ministry, provides victims with medical and legal aid as well as financial compensation from the state – up to 20,000 euros. These benefits do not depend on a court verdict.

In May this year, Zeljka Zokalj from the War Veterans’ Ministry said that around 25 million kunas (3.37 million euros) have already been awarded to victims.

From 2015 onwards, 249 requests have been filed and 156 of them approved.

Visnja Misin, a lawyer from Vinkovci who worked as a journalist in the 1990s, said that of those who have experienced some form of detention during the 1990 war in Croatia, at least 10 per cent experienced sexual assault, which she estimated at around 3,000 people.

But while debating the draft law in 2015, some MPs argued that some victims should be excluded by the legislation, said Nela Pamukovic, an activist who co-founded the Centre for Women War Victims.

“It was clear from the parliamentary debates [in 2015] that they [lawmakers] considered that only women of Croat nationality could get reparations while women of Serb ethnicity were not victims of aggression against the Republic of Croatia,” Pamukovic told BIRN.

Lawmakers believed that Croatian soldiers “could not have committed this crime”, she said.

There have also been issues with the implementation of the law, she added. Some victims have had their requests to be registered for benefits turned down – “for example, people who are Croatian citizens but the rape was committed in Bosnia, or [in cases] in which the commission estimates that the rape is not related to the aggression against the Republic of Croatia”.

Both Pamukovic and Misulin said that the law came too late, forcing victims to relive past trauma again, so many years on, but both believe that it was a great achievement.

“I’m endlessly glad that at least some of the victims have some [benefits], that the state told them in a symbolic way: ‘I’m sorry that this happened,’” Misulin said.

Pamukovic argued however that the War Veterans’ Ministry is still not doing enough to promote the law, or to educate victims on their rights.

Ruzica Barbaric, a 67-year-old Croatian woman who was raped after Serbian troops captured the eastern town of Vukovar in November 1991, has spoken publicly many times about her experience.

When the law was introduced, Barbaric said the financial compensation was welcome, and encouraged other women who had suffered sexual violence during the war to summon up the courage to speak out.

But she also called for the perpetrators to face justice: “The law and the compensation are worth nothing if the perpetrators continue to walk free. I want them to answer for their crimes,” she told Reuters news agency.

Kosovo: social stigmas persist

Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman, one of the few Kosovo women to speak out about wartime rape. Photo: Kosovo presidency.

The issue of wartime sexual violence became headline news in Kosovo again last month when MP Flora Brovina displayed an explicit photograph of what she claimed was a Kosovo Albanian woman being raped by three Serb policemen.

The image shocked the public, particularly rape victims and their families, but it soon became clear that the photograph was not authentic and had actually been taken from a pornographic website.

This sparked a backlash, with women’s rights organisations protesting that victims should not be used in such a way by politicians. “Do not use our pain and suffering for your own gain,” protest banners urged.

Thousands of women are believed to have been victims of sexual violence inflicted by Serbian forces during the Kosovo war of 1998-99, although there are no confirmed statistics.

In 2014, the Kosovo parliament amended the existing law on the rights of war victims and veterans, including rape victims in the legislation.

In February last year, the authorities started receiving applications from rape victims for verification. Since then, around 800 survivors of sexual violence have applied, 145 have been accepted and 102 rejected. The rest of the applicants are still waiting for decisions, as the process can take up to a year.

Verified victims receive 230 euros a month in compensatory payments. They also receive health benefits; for example, if they are sick as a consequence of the violence they suffered in the war, the state must pay for their treatment, even outside Kosovo, if there is no suitable treatment in the country.

But they do not get free primary or secondary healthcare, as other civilian victims of the war do, or free psychological or psychosocial help. Rights watchdog Amnesty International warned in a report on the legislation that its provisions “fall short of those set out in international standards for the victims of crimes under international law”.

Survivors have until February 2023 to file their requests, which Amnesty International believes is too short a deadline.

The social stigma of a conservative society also deters women from applying, the campaign group said.

“Rape is a wound that will burn your soul day by day; it will make you ashamed in front of your family, in your community. You will carry it all of your life,” said one survivor quoted in the Amnesty report.

“Our society is patriarchal, a women have a hard time coming out and speaking the truth because they get shamed and denigrated,” explained psychiatrist Naim Fanaj.

A few victims have summoned the courage to speak out, like Vasfije Krasniqi-Goodman, who recently testified in front of the US House of Representaives’ foreign affairs committee.

Men who suffered sexual assaults during the Kosovo war are even less likely to speak publicly about it.

“They did all these terrible things to us, they even burned us in intimate places with cigarettes, so that we don’t have intimate relations anymore,” one male victim, who also said that Serbian police forced a father to have sexual relations with his son in order not to be killed, told national television station RTK in May.

Only a few of those responsible for wartime rape in Kosovo have been prosecuted.

“None of the [Hague Tribunal] indictments of Serbian regime perpetrators included charges of rape or sexual violence as a standalone atrocity,” said Paul Williams, a professor of law and international relations at Washington College of Law.

Four senior Serbian officials convicted of wartime crimes by the Hague court were found guilty of having been responsible for persecution by means of sexual violence, among other charges. However, no one has been convicted of wartime rape by courts in Kosovo itself.

“Judges tend to bring in verdicts that respect all the rights of the people who are accused, and identifying them is a big challenge. Therefore many times the accused have escaped without the deserved punishment,” Bekim Blakaj, director of the Humanitarian Law Centre Kosovo, told BIRN.