Contextualizing Gendered Agency in War and Peace: Gender Justice and Women’s Activism in Historical Perspective

This chapter situates the study within its historical context, providing a brief overview of conflict and peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a short account of women’s activism in the former Yugoslavia. The chapter posits that the activism being undertaken by women working firstly within associations of missing and killed persons, secondly within associations comprising former camp detainees and survivors of wartime rape and torture, and thirdly within women’s/feminist advocacy groups, can be understood in terms of a nascent gender justice movement. Victims, survivors, and their representatives have mobilised to expose the gendered impact of transitional justice mechanisms. They foreground women’s experiences as victims and survivors and as subjects of justice, and spotlight the gendered forms of subordination and inequality being forged, shaped, and reproduced. [From the Author]