‘The law comes first?’: the dynamics of victims’ redress in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

What explains the variety in victim-centric state policies of redress in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)? Rather than analyzing BiH as a special case of a divided ethno-national state, this article studies domestic victimhood politics as a phenomenon with wider comparative applications for post-conflict contexts. Redress, a set of policies that legally recognize victims/survivors of wartime atrocities and provide them with in-kind and financial support, has increasingly entered the demands of victims/survivors. Many have sought to expand their rights through new legal frameworks at the state and subnational levels. However, in the Bosnian case only some have succeeded (or partially succeeded) with their demands. Why? Using fieldwork data and relying on literature in transitional justice, identity and peacebuilding, I argue that the differences go beyond ethno-national divisions and identity politics and are explained by how victims/survivors utilize their victim capital that combines mobilization resources, moral authority and international salience.

KEYWORDS:

• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• redress
• activism
• victimhood politics
• transitional justice

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Claire Greenstein and Jasna Dragovi#x107;-Soso for their insightful comments on various drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. This article uses unpublished data from my previous research, see Barton Hronešová (2020).

2. Zakon o nestalim osobama (21 October 2004), Službeni glasnik Bosne i Hercegovine Broj 50, 9. November 2004, str. 5225–5229.

3. The term victim (žrtva) is generally used in Bosnian for both surviving and killed victims. However, as the term survivor is more empowering (cf. Dunn 2012). I use victims/survivors when referring to surviving victims in all contexts, but otherwise follow the local usage of ‘victim’.

4. I do not analyze the District of Brčko due to the scope of this article.

5. Implementation, which often stalls after adoption, is not explored here due to the scope of this article.

6. Ethics has been extensively considered and obtained approval of the University of Oxford Ethics Committee. I received informed consent for all interviews, which were audio-recorded in Bosnian, translated and transcribed in English in NVivo. All interviews have been anonymized here.

7. Interview with a victim of torture (former camp inmate), Ilidža, 2019. 1 Bosnian Mark equals 0.5 Euro.

8. As defined in the 2005 UN ‘Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation’.

9. ‘Reparations’ are conceptually so ‘overstretched’ that they often seem to include all forms of dealing with the past.

10. Personal interview with an activist, Belgrade, 2014.

11. Interview with a victim of torture (former camp inmate), Ilidža, 2019.

12. Interview with a victim of torture, Sarajevo-Dobrinja, 2019.

13. It is plausible to include other groups, such as children born out of rape. Here, my aim here was to illustrate the arguments on the most prominent victim groups in Bosnia. For analyses of other groups, see Barton Hronešová (2020).

14. Interview with a human rights expert, Bijeljina, 2015.

15. This is notoriously difficult to measure. Yet similar concepts have been studied using documents such as UN resolutions, court decisions, memoranda and reports by multilateral organizations (see Oppermann and Viehrig 2011).

16. Around 7,600 still remain missing as of 2021 (Trepanic 2021).

17. Interviews with survivors in Srebrenica and Sarajevo, 2019.

18. The OHR website documents this. See http://www.ohr.int/cat/ohr-press-releases/page/2/?mo&y=1996, accessed 1 September 2021.

19. Interview with a victim leader, Srebrenica, 2019.

20. Interviews with survivors in Eastern Sarajevo, 2015.

21. Interview with a missing-persons organization, Sarajevo, 2019.

22. Interview with an ex-detainee, Ilidža, 2019.

23. Interviews with social workers in Tuzla and Sarajevo, 2014 and 2015.

24. Interview in Tuzla, 2015.

25. The Croat union has been involved in all negotiations but is less salient.

26. In 2019, the then leader of the FBiH Union was arrested for fraud (Radio Slobodna Evropa 2019).

27. Interview with an NGO worker, Sarajevo 2015 and 2019.

28. Interview with an ex-detainee, Višegrad, 2015.

29. Interview with an ex-detainee, Sarajevo, 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/T007036/1]; European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant [101019884].

Notes on contributors

Jessie Barton Hronešová

Jessie Barton Hronešová is Marie Curie-Sklodowska Global Action Fellow at UNC Chapel Hill and Ca’ Foscari Venice. Her research focuses on dealing with the past in Central and Southeast Europe. She is the author of The Struggle of Redress: Victim Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2020, Palgrave Macmillan).