Mistrust, prejudice and little support – this is the daily life of thousands of women raped during the Bosnian war (1992-1995), 14 years after the end of the conflict. It is unknown how many women were raped, but estimates reveal at least 25,000, most of them Muslim. There were Serbs and Croats, too. NGOs estimate that about one thousand children were born out of such abuses.
The trauma is aggravated by the absence of a law that may help these victims move forward. Moreover, the stigma of what happened and the conservatism of their society which sees them accountable for what happened to them and not as victims forced many to abandon their children after birth. Most of the victims gave up their children for adoption to conceal what had happened to them.
There is the case of a raped woman who kept her child, then suffered a nervous breakdown, and killed the baby after a few months. While claiming their rights at various institutions of the country, some of the raped women found their abusers as employees in the public offices that they approached. There, too, is the son of a raped woman who was adopted by a couple from a city 110 kilometers from Sarajevo. His adoptive parents say that the child was on the verge of suicide after his biological mother denied any contact with him and his schoolmates branded him derogatory names.
A research carried out in Zagreb (Croatia) showed that the violations committed during the war left serious and lasting psychological consequences for women. 58% of them suffered from depression and 25% had suicidal thoughts after rape. These are the ‘invisible’ victims of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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