Before 1992, Mirsada Tursunovic had her life in front of her. She wanted to be a typist in her hometown of Zvornik. But the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina changed everything. She was raped at the age of 18 at the Caparde concentration camp.
Instead of chasing her dreams, Tursunovic has since been trying to chase away the nightmare of what happened.
“They took me to help dress a woman who couldn't move. I managed to see her, and then he [a soldier] immediately ordered me to go upstairs with him," she recounts.
"He started cursing and told me to undress. That’s when I began to tremble. It was only then that I realized what was about to happen.”
Adila Suljevic lived some 70 kilometers away in the town of Brcko.
She was 27 at the time, married and worked in the clothing industry.
She didn't know Tursunovic, but they were about to be linked together -- forever -- in an unimaginable way.
“I went through every possible trauma. I was held at gunpoint three times,” she says.
She was also raped by a soldier during the war.
“When I managed to reach freedom, I got divorced because I endured a lot of stigma from my first husband.”
Tursunovic’s rapist fled the country. Suljevic reported the crime committed against her, but she says she was told the soldier who raped her died in the war.
Broken lives, lasting trauma, and the fight for basic rights: These are the realities for thousands of women who were raped during the war in Bosnia.
Meanwhile, many of the perpetrators of rape and other crimes against women still walk free.
“It is not easy to say that you were raped”, says Midheta Kaloper Oruli, a representative of the Association of War Victims "Foca 92-95".
“Does anyone understand the weight and the pain that sentence carries?”
Crimes Against Humanity
The region of Foca in eastern Bosnia was one of many sites in the country that endured a campaign of ethnic cleansing, murder, and rape led by Bosnian Serbs.
Much of the destruction of villages and peoples' lives were documented by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which ruled that crimes against humanity had taken place against Bosnian Muslims.
It was because of horrid crimes that took place in Kaloper Oruli's hometown of Foca that the ICTY qualified sexual slavery as a crime against humanity.
“Rape is not a mistake, it is not an unfortunate event, it is not a shame. Rape is a crime,” says Kaloper Oruli.
What happened in Bosnia is not an isolated incident.
Wars in Bosnia and Rwanda raised awareness of sexual violence in conflict, says Irene Fellin, NATO’s Special Representative on Women, Peace, and Security.
While such violence still happens, the culture of accountability has begun to shift, she adds.
On June 19, 2015, the United Nations adopted a resolution recognizing conflict-related sexual violence as a war tactic.
To honor those who have suffered through such crimes, and to raise awareness of the issue, it established June 19 as the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict.
“If you look at the current context and Ukraine, we are seeing something very unique. We see that while they are fighting, they are already prosecuting the perpetrators [of sexually violent crimes such as rape]. And that is something that really showed the change in culture,” explains Fellin.
She admits that change comes slowly. And she adds that while conflict-related sexual violence remains an issue, the evolution of the issue is important “because it speaks about change of mentality.”
According to data from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion -- launched in February 2022 -- there have been 363 documented cases of conflict-related sexual violence.
By comparison, it is estimated that at least 20,000 women were raped during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Positive Results
“We really saw positive results on how we tackle the problem,” says Fellin.
That change has done little, however, in bringing about justice for Bosnian women like Tursunovic and Suljevic.
Few of the perpetrators in the Bosnian war were ever punished.
By the time the ICTY closed in 2017, fewer than 40 people had been convicted of wartime sexual violence. Though some trials continue in local courts, many victims are still waiting for justice.
“No one has been sentenced for the crimes that have been committed against me and my family. I’ve lost 13 members of my immediate family,” says Kaloper Oruli, adding that time is not on their side.
“Witnesses are dying, perpetrators are dying, they won’t live long enough to be brought to justice.”
Tursunovic never became a typist.
Today she is the president of an association that makes handicrafts. It was only in 2009 -- 17 years after being raped -- that she finally decided to publicly recount what happened to her.
“I started to speak publicly because of other women. I am sorry that they are not speaking out of fear,” Tursunovic says, adding that there are many women whose husbands still don’t even know what happened to them during the war.
Just like Tursunovic, Suljevic also took time before she could share what happened to her. She then became one of the first women to testify on war trauma.
In 2016, she founded an NGO to build a support network for women survivors of wartime sexual violence and provide them with a space to talk freely about their trauma and feel empowered.
“Working on yourself and healing is very important. I didn’t know that at first. But when I saw that I was getting better, I started recommending it to other women, because I know many who have gone through the same,” she says.
And while women who survived rape may wish for many things, what they need, Suljevic, says, is simple justice.
“And we would be more or less satisfied. We could have a few peaceful and pleasant years left to live -- and that’s all we ask.”
