Speech of the Minister Vesna Pusić on the conference “The Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflicts”

I would first like to thank the Ministry of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina for hosting this important Conference jointly with the British Embassy in Sarajevo and the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway.

It is very important to speak about this issue and to address this issue, because as war crimes are essentially to be eliminated from face of the earth it should be below dignity of any human being to perpetrate such crimes.

I would also like to thank our hosts here at the Ministry of Defence in Sarajevo and would like to focus on two aspects of sexual violence in a conflict. I would focus on this feeling that people have, that societies have until it happens, that this could not happen to us, that there are some distant communities, distant tribes and distant countries in which things like that that can happen. The other is a perverse, but deeply rooted notion that somehow this is shameful or a stigma to the victim. The distant societies concept is, I believe, very clear to all of us from this region. We also used to think the same. We thought - I definitely did - before it happened in our own country, to our own neighbours, acquaintances, friends, in our own society, we also thought this was something far away, and something that may be noble to take up as a cause, but something that certainly could not happen here. Until it happened. It is my deep conviction that without raising the awareness about it, without talking about it, it could happen anywhere. Literally, it could happen in any society in any country, given the right circumstances. Rather in a non-belligerent setting, it is actually happening everywhere. Sexual violence against people is something that is happening in every society, and from this reality it draws its claim to existence. In times of war it is then used as a weapon, an effective instrument of ethnic cleansing. Considering that it could happen anywhere, I think we should be aware of the need to start fighting it not only as something that is happening in times of war but as something for which the foundations are laid in the perception of our own societies that tolerate sexual violence against women, as well as against men, not as something that is acceptable but as something that is still part of our lives. However, it is not our part of our life, or at least it should not be part of our life, and it should not have a claim to existence under any circumstances. It, therefore, should not have a claim to existence in war.

As for the other aspect, it is not a myth, it is reality on another level, it is actually quite shocking that sexual violence has been accepted or that it has been treated as something that stigmatises the victims, that the victim should be the one who is ashamed, who is somehow excluded from the society. This is why sexual violence in times of war is such an effective instrument. It destroys the victim, it destroys the family, it destroys the community and lasts for very long time. It lasts a lifetime for the victims and their families, but it also lasts a lifetime for the perpetrators. People who actually committed such horrible acts in times of war are unable to extricate themselves from being so much below the level of humanity. Because this is exactly what it is and this is exactly how it is seen.

I would like to briefly mention two examples. One is a statement by a woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina who had been raped during the war and then, as a witness, said: "I can now talk about this because my family has forgiven me. So, I am free to speak about my experience". The other example is not from the war but from peacetime and involves sexual violence and, I believe, a conviction. This didn't happen in Croatia or in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or in other countries of this region, or in any of the African countries either. It was presented on the BBC television, showing men who were victims of domestic sexual violence and who sat in front of the cameras with paper bags on their heads, because even in a very advanced culture it was considered shameful and that they would somehow be looked down upon because they were willing to speak about their experience. This is what we need to fight. We need to very clearly show that the fact that people are made victims of sexual violence in times of war, that people are made victims of sexual violence in peace time, is unacceptable, inhuman, and that the acts of the perpetrators are shameful beyond comprehension. Not letting them get away with impunity means we turn the tables on them for sexual violence, we turn the tables on the people who use this in an organized manner, so that it just does not happen. For such crimes to be perpetrated somebody must organise, order and facilitate it and intentionally use it as a weapon of war.

It is for this reason that this initiative is becoming so important: to eradicate or expose and punish sexual violence as a weapon of war. It is an initiative to begin to create legislation, pass laws in our parliaments, talk about it. It is also an initiative to expose sexual violence as such and eventually make it something that human beings are ashamed of, a very rare anomaly rather that the wartime order of the day, as it still happens to be at the present.

Thank you, Foreign Secretary Hague, thank you, Special Envoy Jolie, thank you, Zlatko, and thank you, Ministry of Defence