Bosnia’s broken promises
People & Power meets rape victims of the Bosnian-Serb conflict still battling for justice.
In 2001 history was made at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia when Justice Florence Mumba found three Bosnian Serb men guilty of rape.
Although the tribunal had dealt with rape before that was the first case to focus solely on its use as a weapon of war.
But victims who thought that this would set an important precedent have been disappointed.
They claim that the limited number of prosecutions since 2001 has failed to reflect the true scale of rape committed during the war in the former Yugoslavia.
The issue is especially pertinent right now because this week saw the start of the long-awaited trial of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian-Serb leader accused of crimes ranging from genocide to ethnic cleansing.
Although testimony from rape victims may be used in evidence, again there is no special category in Karadzic’s indictment for crimes of sexual violence.
As People & Power’s Juliana Ruhfus reports, the conflict might have ended 17 years ago but for many of the rape victims who survived, the battle for justice continues.
This episode of People & Power was first broadcast in November 2009.