Attacking people rarely admit to rape
Victims of sexual violence in the war are still unrecognized
The documentary film "Women's court - a feminist approach to justice", filmed on the basis of the testimonies of 36 women who testified about survivors of war crimes and their consequences at the event of the same name in Sarajevo last May, was broadcast on October 7 at the Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade . The witnesses were from all seven countries of the former Yugoslavia, and their stories were grouped into five sessions. One of them was "Female body - battlefield: sexual violence against women". With this, on the occasion of marking 25 years of work of the anti-war organization Women in Black, the question of Serbia's responsibility for the crimes committed in the wars during the XNUMXs, but also the specific issue of the crime that is least talked about, the crime whose victims are the least visible, has once again been opened to the domestic public. sexual violence in war.
Law on the Rights of War Disabled Civilians one of the most discriminatory in Serbia
The only legal framework that defines the category of civilian victims of war, and according to which they have the opportunity to exercise their rights in the Republic of Serbia, is the Law on the Rights of Civilian War Invalids. This law does not contain special provisions that would refer to war events from the period of the nineties, and the very fact that it dates from 1996, and that there was no political or social will to change it in the meantime, "best speaks of what kind of law it is." and what was his goal", believes Milica Kostić from the Humanitarian Law Fund (HHL). According to her, this is one of the most discriminatory laws in Serbia.
"The law excludes a huge number of victims from the circle of protection." Our assessment, based on our experiences in representing victims both in court and in administrative compensation, is that perhaps 10% of victims living in Serbia today are recognized according to this law, and perhaps less," says Kostić. According to the mentioned law, "Civilian invalid of war is a person with a physical impairment of at least 50% due to the wound, injuries or injuries that left visible marks, obtained through ill-treatment or deprivation of liberty by the enemy during wartime, conducting war operations, from residual war material or enemy sabotage, or terrorist actions". This provision exempts, as our interlocutor explains, the families of the missing, victims killed by members of the Serbian security forces, victims killed on the territory of other countries, as well as other categories of victims.
When it comes to victims who survived sexual violence in the war, Kostić states that the Law is not legally strict about not recognizing them, because it states "only victims suffering bodily damage greater than 50%". "What does that mean? '50%' is very controversial. Municipalities often use lists similar to those used by insurance companies - one eye, two eyes, left arm, right leg. That's how they see it," says Kostić.
Taking into account the fact that rape, especially rape in war, leaves a woman primarily with severe psychological consequences and trauma (survivors have a high level of permanent post-traumatic stress disorder compared to victims of other crimes), and that physical ones can also be absent, it is clear that the exercise of their rights to reparation is completely prevented by this Law. Even though there is a possibility that according to the current law, a victim of sexual violence will receive compensation, the fact that this document does not name her as a civilian victim of war clearly speaks of the state's policy towards women who have survived this. If they are not in the law, they do not exist.
Staša Zajović from Women in Black also criticizes the current legislative framework when it comes to civilian victims of war. "This law is militaristic, ethnicized and completely humiliates the victims, which is a continuous practice," she says. When asked why the previous authorities did not provide compensation for the victims of sexual violence in the war, she answers: "It is irresponsibility. The gap between what they say they apply as standards and what they actually do. They do not think to change the value framework and to establish the rule of law. They just want to create a simile of that in order to get foreign policy points." She states that the newly elected prosecutor for war crimes, Snežana Stanojković, did not mention sexual crimes anywhere in her agenda. "She just has a nationalistic approach and doesn't mention victims of sexual crime." Does that mean that they are at the lowest level in that categorization of crimes against the innocent? Does the non-covering of those crimes within the nationalist-militaristic male matrix mean that they would have to admit that the Serbian nation failed to defend those women? That is, your honor, looking at that key. By doing so, they would prove that they did not manage to defend their own either. Also, we would have to talk about a huge number of women raped by members of the Serbian nation, and that would mean great war damage," says Zajović.
And while Kostić believes that the main problem related to compensation is of a financial nature, Zajović states that the key issue here is the combination of male honor and very deep misogyny. "Crimes against women are in the last place for them, both against their own and against others." Feminists from Belgrade declared as early as 1992 that the abuse of women victims of sexual crimes by nationalist-militaristic elites is more than shameful and criminal. We must not forget the fact that the war crime of rape was a war strategy, a strategy for conquering territories, for ethnic cleansing, but also hatred against women, a crime against women, that is, a gender-based crime," Zajović says.
Changing the ancient male attitude
The practice of prosecuting the perpetrators of war crimes of sexual violence began at the international level, with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established in 1993 by the United Nations Security Council. "After the first news at the end of August 1992 about the sexual slavery of women in Bosnia and Herzegovina went around the world, feminist lawyers took up the issue and forced the international community to take action," explains Lepa Mlađenović, a feminist consultant for working with women who have survived sexual violence.
The verdicts of this court for the first time in the history of international humanitarian law characterized rape as a form of torture, and sexual enslavement as a crime against humanity. More than 160 persons have been charged before this court with war crimes, and half of them with sexual violence.
Although it has suffered criticism from a part of the feminist public who believes that, despite the clear definition of rape as a crime against humanity, the ICTY did not take into account the gender dimension and recognized this crime as a crime against women because over 95 percent of victims of war rape are women, this first with verdicts for rape in war, the ICTY has unequivocally contributed to the punishment of perpetrators of sexual violence in armed conflicts. In the meantime, courts related to the conflicts in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Republic of Congo, Cambodia, Liberia and Bangladesh have also been established to prosecute this type of crime. The Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court in 2002, also explicitly states that "rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization or any other form of sexual violence of comparable severity crimes against humanity". Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, president of the ICTY from 1997 to 1999, in the film "Ending impunity, sexual violence before the Tribunal" states: "I believe that what the ICTY did, first of all, by including rape as a crime against humanity , and then by prosecuting those crimes and developing a case law related to sexual violence, led to the fact that the leaders of these conflicts are now being warned that the rules have changed."
It is undeniable that at the international level, the status of sexual violence as a crime in war has come out of the dark, and that it is no longer considered "collateral damage", but a gross violation of women's human rights. In 2008, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1820 on stopping all acts of sexual violence against civilians in conflict zones. "With this Resolution and feminist activities in the last 20 years, the age-old male attitude has been changed, that after a difficult war, every soldier has the right to a little consolation, as Stalin, Hirohito, Mladić, etc. said, and this means that the leaders give him permission, that is, an order to the crime of raping women," says Lepa Mlađenović.
In 2010, the body of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for sexual violence in conflicts was established at the UN, and before that, as early as 2000, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, Women, chrism, security, calling on member states not only to "prevent impunity and prosecute those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, including those related to sexual and other violence against women and girls" (Art. 11), but also called " all parties involved to adopt a gender perspective when negotiating and implementing peace agreements, including, among others, the special needs of women and girls during repatriation and resettlement, and during rehabilitation, reintegration and post-conflict renewal" (Art. 8).
When it comes to reparations for civilian victims of war, the most important document of the United Nations Assembly is Basic principles and guidelines for exercising the right to a legal remedy and reparations for victims of serious violations of international law, human rights and serious violations of international humanitarian law, adopted in 2006. According to this document, five types of compensation are prescribed - restitution, rehabilitation, reparation, various forms of satisfaction (public apologies, commemorations, establishing the facts, telling the truth, etc.), as well as guarantees of non-repetition. For the victims of wartime rape, the Republic of Serbia did not provide any of the mentioned compensations.
Staša Zajović states that the aforementioned resolutions do not have a binding character, "but they have great moral and political significance and affect Serbia's relations with the international community, but also regional relations even more. Their respect can be one of the important instruments for achieving regional stability".
Under the influence of the ICTY, local prosecutions for war crimes were created over time. In Serbia, there has been a War Crimes Prosecutor's Office since 2003, and yet, until March 2016, there were only two convictions for sexual violence in the war (the 'Lekaj' and 'Bijeljina' cases), out of a total of six cases in which the accused were were also for these works. Therefore, despite the fact that in Serbia, practically, there is no kind of reparations and recognition for women who survived sexual violence in the war, the satisfaction they would get by prosecuting those who committed sexual violence is also inadequate and insignificant. Mlađenović emphasizes that this must change, "and not only because of the international community, but primarily because of our responsibility towards women of any affiliation who live on the territory of Serbia and have survived serious crimes." The rules, as Judge Kirk McDonald said, may have changed, but women in Serbia do not feel justice on their own skin.
Examples of prosecuting crimes of sexual violence in war, within the framework of accusations of war crimes against the civilian population, before the domestic legislation prove not only insensitivity to this topic and inadequate protection for victims, but also an active refusal to deal with it.
In the acquittal from the case "Bijeljina II" it is stated that there is no evidence that the accused undertook acts of 'rape and unnatural fornication' against the injured parties. Namely, the injured parties testified that they were raped by a person in uniform, and in his defense, the accused claimed that he was at the scene of the crime, but he was wearing a white tracksuit. Although in the first-instance verdict, the court considered that it was logical that the injured parties could not be precise about the clothing of the perpetrators due to the "dramatic nature of the situation", the Court of Appeal rejected this, considering it "unreal" that none of the injured parties stated that one of the perpetrators was wearing white trainers.
According to the report of the Fund for Humanitarian Law, the victims in the case "Skocic" were subjected to vulgar insults and insults by the accused during their testimony, and despite the legal obligation to protect the integrity of witnesses, the president of the panel did not impose formal sanctions on the accused, but only informal warnings. These women also did not have psychological support during the trial, and one of them refused to testify in the repeated proceedings, making the same decision as all the witnesses in the aforementioned "Bijeljina II" case.
In the case of "Rider", which was also conducted for war crimes against the civilian population, like the previous two, although the witnesses explicitly spoke about the rape scenes, the court did not include these acts in the indictment. "Every time the witness mentioned rape, the court would immediately redirect the conversation to the question of whether they were beaten." When the witness misunderstood the court's request for an additional description, thinking that she was being asked about the rape, and said that she would not talk about it, the court explicitly stated its position: 'I am not going to bring you back to talk about this incident related to the rape, but I'm interested in beatings, if you were physically beaten, mistreated?'" the HLC report states.
Practice of countries in the region
In 2006, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina made amendments to the existing one Law on Basics of Social Protection, protection of civilian victims of war and protection of families with children 36/99 for the first time in history recognized the status of civilian victims of war to victims of sexual violence in war. The "For the Dignity of Survivors" campaign contributed to the adoption of the amendment and the recognition of the status of civilian victims of war, which, along with the screening of the award-winning film "The Humpback", collected 50.000 signatures of support for victims of sexual violence in the war in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before that, the only law from the region that mentioned compensation for victims of war rape was passed in 1993 in the Republic of Srpska. However, in addition to that Law on the Protection of Civilian War Victims of the Republika Srpska requires that the victim has a physical impairment of at least 60%, the deadline for submitting a claim for compensation was set at five years from the moment of entry into force. With the amendments to the law from July 2007, the provisions regarding sexual violence did not change, and this deadline was extended - until the end of that same year. Nada Golubović, president of the Board of Directors of the United Women of Banja Luka, states that "women victims of war rape were not recognized in that law as a special category, so in that sense they did not have social protection rights either." disability, "which was almost impossible". In addition, according to her words, most of the women victims of war rape did not even know that they had the right to exercise their rights under this law, they did not have any support and live on the border of poverty or in complete poverty. "Unlike the Federation of BiH, where it was worked on very early on and support was given to women who were victims of war rape, in the Republic of Srpska it was a taboo topic and only recently did they start talking about it," Golubović explains, adding that because of this, women "they are no longer ready to talk about rape during the war".
Marijana Senjak, a feminist therapist, says that those in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, "informed by the impossibility of meeting the deadline, incorporated a provision in this law that there is no deadline for submitting requests." She explains that the definition of torture from the UN Convention on Victims of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Punishments and Procedures was transferred to the Law on Social Protection, and that victims of sexual violence were given a special status. "That was the only way it could be, in order to grant them the appropriate monthly compensation and other rights, because all victims should have equal rights under the same law." Therefore, they were given a special status and the base for awarding the monthly amount was 70% of the average veteran's pension at that time. It is a decent amount and today it is somewhere around 280 to 300 euros," says Senjak. She explains that later the funding of these benefits was separated at the federal and cantonal level, and that the federal one was more regular, while at the cantonal level it was awaited for certain periods. The problem related to the implementation of this law arose due to the fact that the compensation for victims of the war crime of rape is placed in the social protection system, and not in a special framework related to transitional justice and the reparation program, and that the woman who survived this has to choose between reparation or other forms of social protection.
In the 10 years of the existence of this law, more than 800 women who survived rape in the Federation of BiH have achieved the right to compensation - they are the first in history to have this type of compensation for sexual crimes committed during the war. And yet, at the same time, it is clear that this number still does not represent the real number of those who live with this experience and that most women still need a lot of personal and institutional support in order to talk about their experiences.
Staša Zajović states that the question "are the laws enough?" represents a feminist dilemma. "Even if we have laws and implementation, the question remains what will we do with prejudices, stereotypes and demonization of women who are victims of sexual violence." It is a more difficult and serious thing than the law, because it shows that it is a multifaceted question of how to encourage women who are victims of that crime." She says that even the best laws on paper are meaningless unless cultural representations change. "If the idea is only perpetuated that women who do this bring a stain on their family and community, but also prove that men were not capable of defending them, viewed from a male perspective, then that is the biggest obstacle for women to come forward and disclose crimes against themselves. This is where the perversion of the patriarchy, but also of the entire legislative framework, is most obvious. How victims become guilty and responsible for the violence they suffered. How is it possible that in conditions of poverty and misery, so few women decide to apply? That means bullying, self-punishment," concludes Zajović.
Stigma, shame and embarrassment are not only characteristic of women from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nora Ahmetaj, an expert on transitional justice issues and the founder of the Center for Research, Documentation and Publication (CRDP) from Kosovo, states that the Kosovo society is extremely patriarchal and that the community and families of women who have been raped can be extremely strict towards them. "There is no emphasis on the law, because it is important for us that women are accepted not only within the legal framework, but also that society restores their dignity and that the public knows about their suffering," says Ahmetaj. "Imagine how they feel when neither their families nor their daughters can witness what they experienced. That burden they carry, that suffering and that feeling of guilt, only the community can help them by telling them that it is not their fault that they were raped," she adds.
In Kosovo, victims of war rape were legally recognized in 2014 to the Law on Amendments and Amendments to Law no. 04/L 054 on the status and rights of fallen fighters, invalid, veterans, participants of the Kosovo Liberation Army, victims of sexual violence in the war and their families. Ahmetaj states that it was important to her personally that these women be placed within the legal framework and thereby give them importance and an opportunity to regain their dignity. "We, as a civil society, lobbied very hard for it, we had strong support from the international community, and then the president at the time, Atifete Jahjaga, joined us. "I think she wanted to leave a legacy when she left, and really, without her, we wouldn't have reached the commission that was formed," she adds. "However, there was a change of president, and it was the current president's party that was one of the fiercest advocates against treating raped women as civilian victims of war," says Ahmetaj. The Government of Kosovo has never adopted the budget and the law is still not implemented today, despite constant protests and demands from civil society. Ahmetaj states that he does not see any desire or will for the current Government to deal with it.
In addition to the fact that the law is not enforced, there were various controversies regarding the same before its enactment. In Kosovo, as well as in the international public, it was said that the estimated number of women who were raped during the war was 20.000. Nora Ahmetaj, on the other hand, says that this figure is purely political. "With those figures, we lose much more than we gain." When there was a debate in parliament, precisely because of that number, some people from the financial department came and said that it was impossible to pay compensation for 20.000 women. You see, Kosovo is a very small country and it is very difficult to prove it at all, and even the civil society here is very sharply divided about it. The truth is that we do not know how many women have been raped. We know some locations where there were rapes, we also know about some women who were raped that no one knows about and will never find out about. However, 20.000 is a huge number," says Ahmetaj.
Another matter that caused public discussion related to the provision on the time frame of the war. Namely, according to this law, only those women who survived rape and sexual abuse in the period from February 27.02.1998, 20.06.1999 will have the right to reparation. until June 2000, XNUMX. "It is a key issue, that Kosovo Albanians, especially politicians, want to completely distance themselves from the responsibility they would have for everything that happened after that date." We know how many murders, burning houses, missing persons and rapes there were after that. The Law on Missing Persons also covers the period until December XNUMX, but the Law on Civilian Victims does not," says Ahmetaj. She states that the Fund for Humanitarian Law from Kosovo and the CRPD are firmly behind the fact that the violation of human rights that happened afterwards was also related to the war. "It is related to the war and it is a consequence of the war," adds Ahmetaj.
Commenting on the time frame specified in the Kosovo law, Staša Zajović says that it is unacceptable, because we know that a greater number of disappearances of Serbian civilians occurred after that. "It is always the responsibility of the majority of the nation, that is, those who make the law," she states and adds that all these issues have "terrible possibilities of abuse for state-national purposes."
Croatia is the only country in the region that has a special law for victims of sexual violence in war. Law on the rights of victims of sexual violence during the armed aggression against the Republic of Croatia in the Homeland War it was adopted in 2015. Victims of sexual violence in the war came into the public spotlight in Croatia in 2010 when the book "Sunčica" was published, about a girl who was 8 months old when Serbian soldiers threw jackets on her in order not to listen to her cries while she was imprisoned with her mother who was kept as a sex slave in Vukovar. The author of the book, Marija Slišković, was the president of the Women in the Homeland War organization, which organized a series of public presentations of the book at which women who survived sexual violence also spoke. Nela Pamuković, one of the founders of the Center for Women Victims of War - ROSA from Zagreb, states that "the stories of women who survived the rape in Vukovar aroused great interest and sympathy from the public, but also that the problem came into the focus of discussions due to other circumstances - in the organization of the Women's Court began in the entire region, in which over 200 women's organizations participated, which once again opened the space for women to talk about their experiences". According to her, the financial support of the international community was important in Croatia, which financed the drafting of laws, psychological and legal support for women from Vukovar, and research in the framework of which information was requested from all institutions and organizations that worked with women during the war. "I already described to them the example of a woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina who lived in Croatia and could not get rights, that is, status, there, and in Croatia there was no such possibility yet." I gave them examples from the practice of the Center for Women Victims of War - ROSA, each of which was different and which indicated that women of different nationalities were raped, contrary to the prevailing nationalist discourse in the public when this topic was written about. "Unfortunately, the aforementioned research served the Ministry of Veterans Affairs primarily to get an estimate of how many women could request the status, which means a financial estimate," says Pamuković. She says that for the first time, different organizations collaborated together in the process of drafting laws to achieve greater rights for women, regardless of their opposing political views.
Marijana Senjak, who was then in the working group for the adoption of the law, states that, in addition to representatives of institutions, a group of women, representatives of the civil sector, women's organizations, feminists, representatives of the international community and women from the association that published testimonies in the book "Sunčica". "The fact that we worked together for the benefit of the women for whom the law was passed, does not mean that we shared the same values and the same beliefs, but we were all at the service of a process much more important than each of us," says Senjak.
However, during the process of passing the law, the ease with which issues of justice for women become tools of nationalist and right-wing values has been shown. "Feminist organizations have expressed concern about public statements, including those during the debate on the Law in the Parliament, that victims of sexual violence cannot exercise their rights if the perpetrators are members of the Croatian army and police forces. A discourse appeared according to which it was said that all rape victims should not have the same rights, and solutions were advocated that would discriminate against rape victims and that would make it impossible for women of Serbian nationality to exercise their rights," says Pamuković.
The law was finally passed in 2015, with strong advocacy by women's groups that there is no deadline for submitting requests and that the amounts of prescribed monthly and one-time compensation correspond to basic life needs and at least partially compensate for the neglect of the rights of victims of sexual violence in the previous two decades. Nela Pamuković states that "they also warned that the definition of sexual violence in the Law is too narrow because sexual violence is defined by a 'closed list' of illegal actions", and that they indicated that, "although it is evident that e.g. lewd acts and sexual harassment do not have the same weight as the forms of sexual violence enumerated in the law, they should certainly be included in the law in order to ensure the right of those persons who, on these grounds, could have suffered permanent trauma, considering the wartime conditions of committing the act". Although in the Law, in addition to the closed circle of actions, there is also an open provision "another form of sexual violence of comparable severity", Pamuković explains that "there is certainly a fear of how the provision will be interpreted if other forms are not explicitly mentioned".
Marijana Senjak states that until the last proposal of the draft law, they were not sure whether they would include the provision that there would be no deadline. She adds that this is very significant, especially considering the type of trauma. "When someone will submit a request and when they will open the issue, that is, speak publicly about the trauma of sexual violence, depends on the degree of recovery of the victim." "Only when he is sufficiently empowered, when he finds the strength to speak about it, will he start fighting for the realization of his rights," says Senjak.
By the end of May 2016, 146 requests were submitted in Croatia, and 105 victims achieved status and the right to compensation. Still in the process of passing the law, feminist organizations also criticized provisions that gave significant powers to the Minister of Veterans Affairs in relation to the Commission for Victims of Rape in War, the body in charge of granting status. "This turned out to be true very quickly, given that the minister dismissed the members of the Commission and blocked the implementation of the law," says Pamuković. Indeed, after temporarily stopping the work of the Commission, the Minister of Veterans Affairs decided to dismiss six members in September of this year. "Victims of sexual violence in the war have once again, after more than twenty years of neglect, become victims of pre-election political manipulations, and we consider this unacceptable," stated the statement of the Women's Network of Croatia regarding these dismissals.
It is clear that the practice of the countries in the region indicates that laws enabling compensation for women who survived sexual violence in the war were not easy to pass, and that their implementation is even more difficult, and that political currents continue to prevail over the justice that all victims have right. Serbia not only had the opportunity to learn from these examples, but should have been the first to take responsibility and ensure the possibility of restoring the dignity of women who were raped during the wars it fought. And yet, the pattern chronicled by feminist author Susan Brownmiller back in 1970 in "Against Our Will: Women, Men, Rape" always seems to be the same - "rape people rarely admit rape."
Definition of enemy
At the end of 2014, the Ministry of Labor, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs of the Republic of Serbia initiated the adoption of a new law regarding civilian victims of war. Given that they did not consult with the civil sector on this matter, the Humanitarian Law Fund sent objections to the text of the law to the Ministry. Until the end of 2015, there was no new information from the Ministry on this topic, and then inscriptions appeared in the media that the law was still being worked on and that it would soon be adopted. Although the HLC never officially received a working version of the new draft law, they managed to get a glimpse of it. "Nothing has been changed as far as civilian casualties are concerned." He will include civil and veterans' issues in one. With the fact that this part about the fighters has been improved and arranged, and the part that refers to the civilian victims of the war is just pasted without changes", says Milica Kostić.
The Commissioner of the Council of Europe for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, reacted to this draft, who in September of this year sent a letter to the minister of the competent ministry, Aleksandar Vulin, in which he drew attention to the importance of recognizing the victims of war events. "Although the draft law significantly improved the legal status of veterans and their families, it completely left out some categories of war victims (about 15.000 people), such as families of missing persons, victims of sexual violence in the war and victims of the actions of the Serbian armed forces," the letter states. .
Commenting on the current draft of the Law that privileges fighters, Kostić says that it is logical from the perspective of the state because there is a business relationship with the fighters - you worked for the state, I have to guarantee your rights, while civilian victims of war are always left aside. "It is always a question, why should the state of Serbia deal with it when, allegedly, there was no war on its territory." First, he must deal with the perpetrators because they live in Serbia and that is quite clear. Serbia was a participant in almost all wars in the former Yugoslavia (with the exception of Macedonia) and a large number of war participants of Serbian nationality from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina received Serbian citizenship after the wars and settled there, and a large number of perpetrators of war crimes live in Serbia, including the perpetrators sexual violence. Secondly, a large number of refugees, including victims of sexual violence, have settled permanently on the territory of Serbia," says Kostić.
Due to all of the above, the Humanitarian Law Fund created its own model in 2015 of the Law on the Rights of Civilian Victims violation of human rights in armed conflicts and in connection with armed conflicts in the period from 1991. to 2001. years. "This model was created with the idea of raising the issue in the public eye, even if it is only a professional one, and with the hope that it will be treated as a good-faith attempt to work on that topic," says Kostić. Although they forwarded it to the competent and other ministries, Kostić states that they never received any response.
This model law recognizes the status of victims of sexual violence in war, but also significantly improves the provisions of the existing law. The omission of the provision that the act must be committed by an "enemy army" is particularly important, because it opens up the circle of perpetrators of the crime, and we know from the experiences of women that it was not unusual for them to be raped by men of the same nationality. This provision was highlighted by Staša Zajović, speaking about the Roma citizens who were forced to leave Kosovo with their families in 1999. "Roma women - where are they today?" In what conditions do they live? Do they even dare to talk about it? They survived sexual violence from all parties," Zajović states, wondering how the current law would define their enemy.
And yet, this model also prescribes a specific deadline for submitting a request (3 years), the limitation of which has already been discussed. For victims of sexual violence, it is important to provide special specialized treatment and psychological support, which this model law does not prescribe. There may also be a justified fear that the Office for Status Assignment, which, according to this model, would consist of three members from the civil service, regardless of long-term engagement in the field of human rights, would be insufficiently sensitive and expert in cases of sexual violence, and that it would be significant that a civil society representative from one of the women's organizations participates in its work. In this sense, it is also important to understand this model law as a blueprint that can be worked on, which was the goal of the Humanitarian Law Fund.
In Serbia, there are no statistics or estimates on the number of women who were raped during the war. One of the first organizations that women could turn to for support was the Autonomous Women's Center against Sexual Violence, which was created in 1993 with this goal in mind. "The autonomous women's center against sexual violence was created to organize emotional support for women who survived sexual violence in war zones in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and later in Kosovo. Many of them stayed to live in Serbia. From our experience working with women, we know that there were those who were raped by men of all nationalities," says Lepa Mlađenović. According to her, even if there are only a few women who could benefit from this law, the state of Serbia must introduce it. "This confirms that sexual violence in the war existed and that the state cares for female citizens who survived this type of crime," she states. Mlađenović believes that the provision will be included in the law, but that the question is "whether it will be for the sake of women and the recognition of their suffering, or for certain political goals." However, he reiterates that even before, and especially after that, our society has a long way to go to take responsibility, remove stigma and support women who live with severe trauma.
