WUNRN
OSCE - Organization for Security
& Co-Operation in Europe
BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA - COMBATING
IMPUNITY FOR CONFLICT-RELATED SEXUAL VIOLENCE: PROGRESS & CHALLENGES - OSCE
Direct Link to Full 78-Page 2014
OSCE Report:
Almost
twenty years after the close of the conflict in the Former Yugoslavia, the OSCE
Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Rule of Law Unit has recently released a
report detailing progress the country has made in prosecuting war crimes cases
involving sexual violence.
The report, titled “Combating Impunity for
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Progress and
Challenges,” is available in both Bosnian and English. It focuses on the prosecution of wartime
crimes of sexual violence committed against an estimated 20,000 women, and
countless men and boys during the 1992-1995 conflict in the former Yugoslav
state. The report examines the prosecution of wartime sexual violence
during the period from 2005 to 2013 and provides a background on
international jurisprudence on rape and sexual violence more generally.
It also describes the establishment of certain forms of sexual
violence as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide within the
Bosnian national legal framework. Moreover, the report details the Bosnian
special evidentiary rules governing sexual violence cases and examines the
practice in both Bosnia’s high State Court, as well as the regional cantonal
courts. The report also includes several annexes that set
forth the number of sexual violence cases charged, as well as a list of
completed and ongoing cases involving wartime sexual violence before the Court
of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In addition to serving as a useful research
tool, the report will help ensure that the lessons learned by Bosnia in
prosecuting crimes of wartime sexual violence will be available to the world in
our efforts to stamp out wartime sexual violence everywhere.
