Violence Against Women in the Yugoslav war as told by Women-Refugees
| Date | 01 September 1998 |
| Published date | 01 September 1998 |
| Author | Ivana Stevanović |
| DOI | 10.1177/026975809800600105 |
International
Review
of
Victimology,
1998,
Vol.
6,
pp.
63-76
0269-7580/98$10
©
1998
A B
Academic
Publishers-
Printed
in
Great
Britain
VIOLENCE
AGAINST
WOMEN
IN
THE
YUGOSLAV
WAR
AS
TOLD
BY
WOMEN-REFUGEES
IVANA
STEVANOVIC
Institute
for
Criminological
and
Sociological
Research,
Gracanicka
18,
11000
Belgrade,
The
Federal
Republic
of
Yugoslavia
ABSTRACT
In
the
first
part
of
the
paper
the
author
discusses
and
interprets
the
results
of
research
carried
out
in
1994,
on
the
basis
of
interviews
with
70
women
refugees
from
Croatia
and
Bosnia
and
Herzegovina,
presently
situated
in
Serbia
and
Montenegro.
Also,
the
first
part of
the
paper
was
written
as
a
result
of
the
interviews
which
the
group
of
authors
conducted
with
54
women
refugees
from
Krajina
in
the
period
between
1
January
1995
and
15
March
1996
in
Serbia,
about
their
own
definition
of
violence
in
war,
which
means
that
their
subjective
definition
was
given
priority
over
the
objective
definition.
This
research
was
aimed
at
the
analysis
of
women's
experience of
violence
in
the
war
conflict
in
our
close
vicinity,
whose
largest
number
of
victims,
as
ever,
were
children
and
women.
We
tried
to
help
the
women
to
articulate
their
own
experiences,
in
such
a
manner
to
avoid
them
being
hurt
in
the
process,
but
rather
to
relieve
their
burdens
of
piled
up
fears
and
emotions.
In
the
second
part
of
the
paper
the
author
evaluates
the
present
situation
in
this
area,
especially
the
process
of
social
adaptation.
INTRODUCTION
There
are
some
22
million refugees
in
the world
today,
of whom some
2.5
million
come
from
the region of ex-Yugoslavia. The first refugees
to
come from that
country "hit the road"
in
March
1991.
They
came from Croatia,
and
as
the war
spread, their number continued
to
grow.
Fleeing death and destruction, a consid-
erable number of these people
found
refuge, perhaps
only
temporarily,
in
the
Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia
(FRY).
According
to
official data gathered
by
the
middle
of
1992,
there
were
426,519 registered refugees in the
FRY.
Continued
war
actions during
1992
and
at
the
beginning of
1993
produced yet another
large
wave
of refugees.
The
largest number of these
people,
for
whom
the war destroyed
not
only
their
previous lives but also
all
their
property,
came into the
FRY
in
the
spring of
1993,
when
their numbers reached
655,000.
Until August
4,
1995,
there were about
500,000 refugees with officially regulated status, of
whom
90%
were
women
and
children.
On
August
4,
1995,
a
large
offensive
by
the Croatian
Army,
effectuated
in
the
region of
the
former Republic of Serbian Krajina, produced another
189,000 refugees, the majority of
whom,
again,
were women
and
children.
Or
to
put
it
more
precisely: there
were
73,687
women,
62,771
men
and
52,687 children
under
18
years
of age.
This
means
that
women
and
children accounted for
two
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