Examples of Women Peace Builders
The scourge
of human trafficking plagues the former Yugoslavia. Selma
Hadzihalilovic, an activist for women’s rights,
human rights, and civil liberties, is the Bosnia and Herzegovina
project coordinator of the Zonta International/STAR Network
of World Learning Anti-Trafficking Community Mobilization
Project. She is the former coordinator of the LAW Team of
the Campaign for the Implementation of the Human Rights of
Conscientious Objection to Compulsory Military Service. The
founder (and former official spokeswoman) of the RING Network,
a group of women’s organizations from Bosnia and Herzegovina
working to end the trafficking of women and children, Ms.
Hadzihalilovic has testified before an OSCE committee in
Vienna and the UN Commission on the Status of Women on the
crisis of human trafficking in post-conflict regions.
In the war-weary former Yugoslavia,
rebuilding efforts are complicated by a history of human
rights abuses and ongoing inter-ethnic strife. Aleksandra
Petric is project coordinator and legal assistant
of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Youth Network in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, a non-governmental organization working
to further the development of civil society. Ms. Petric is
a member of the Coordination Board of the Citizens’ Truth
and Reconciliation Association, which works to establish
a truth and reconciliation commission for Bosnia and Herzegovina
to help people in the region reflect on the causes and aftermath
of recent conflicts, as well as heal from its tragic consequences.
She also directs public advocacy education projects focusing
on political participation, development, and women’s
initiatives.
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Conflict Background
BBC Country Profile: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1066886.stm
International Crisis Group reports: http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/project.cfm?subtypeid=3
United States Institute of Peace resources:
http://www.usip.org/library/pa/index/pa_bosnia.html
http://www.usip.org/library/regions/bosnia.html
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Related Articles
The
Healing Power of Forgiveness
by Swanee Hunt, Scripps Howard News Service
October 22, 2024
Her Majesty
Queen Noor of Jordan and Women Waging Peace Experts Meeting
in Sarajevo
Her Majesty Queen Noor
and ten women peace builders met with domestic government
representatives and international policymakers...
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Related Organizations
Srebrenica
Justice Campaign
Women
Aid International: Tell the World Campaign
Women
For Women International
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Examples
of Women Peace Builders
From 1991 to 1995,
Croatia endured sporadic but bitter fighting in its bid for
independence. As the country continues to repair its infrastructure
and economy, Marina Skrabalo works
to train the next generation of women leaders. She has been
a program manager associate for the STAR Network of World
Learning, which supports non-nationalistic women’s
organizations in the former Yugoslavia, and has worked with
the Center for Peace Studies in Zagreb. Since 1993, Ms. Skrabalo
has been active in Antiwar Campaign Croatia, a hub of peace,
human rights, and women’s rights initiatives.
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Conflict Background
BBC Country Profile: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1097128.stm
International Crisis Group reports: http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/showreport.cfm?reportid=848
United States Institute of Peace report: http://www.usip.org/oc/sr/croatia.html
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Related Organizations
Be active
Be emancipated (B.a.B.e) - Women's Human Rights Group
Centre
for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights
Center for
Women War Victims
NONA
Multimedia Women's Center
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Examples of Women Peace Builders
One of only three women appointed
to the 20-member United Nations Joint Interim Administrative
Structure of war-ravaged Kosovo, Vjosa
Dobruna served as the minister responsible for
democracy building and civil society. She insisted on
the full political participation of women and ethnic
minorities and helped draft an election regulation requiring
that one in every three candidates for the region’s
new assembly be a woman. Dr. Dobruna subsequently co-led
a conference that brought together the women in the Kosovar
parliament for the creation of a multi-party caucus bridging
ethnic and party lines—the only such cross-party
body in Kosovo. She spent 2002-2003 as a fellow at the
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s
Kennedy School of Government, where she researched truth
commissions and explored possible reconciliation models
for Kosovo.
Dedicated to women’s full and productive
participation in the political process, Xheraldina
Vula directs Pristina’s Training Center for
Journalism and Conflict Management, a program of Radio and
Television 21 (RTV 21). She is also deputy director of RTV
21, a progressive multimedia organization whose mission is
to create social change in Kosovo using 21st century information
resources and technology. This involves informing, inspiring,
and educating audiences with programs that encourage the
active involvement of all citizens to engage with all social,
political, and economic issues related to Kosovo’s
development. Combining the powerful tools of the media and
conflict management training, Vula facilitated the establishment
of the Media Project, which educates young women in conflict
management, independent journalism, and leadership.
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Conflict Background
BBC Country Profile: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1039269.stm
International Crisis Group reports: http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/project.cfm?subtypeid=8
United States Institute of Peace resources: http://www.usip.org/library/regions/kosovo.html
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Building
a New Kosova
Vjosa Dobruna, Kosovo
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April 2003
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Related Organizations
Aid
for Women in Kosovo
Motrat
Qiriazi - The Association for the Education of Women
Women
for Women International - Project Kosovo Overview
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to top
Examples
of Women Peace Builders
Though
spared the open war that tore apart Bosnia and Kosovo, Macedonia’s
population dealt with a difficult transition to independence
and simmering ethnic tensions for much of the last two decades. Slavica
Indzevska-Stojanovic, currently a fellow in the Mason
Program in Public Policy and Management at Harvard University’s
Kennedy School of Government, is deputy executive director
for joint programs at the Open Society Institute (OSI). OSI-Macedonia
is an NGO devoted to building and maintaining the infrastructure
and institutions of an open society. Ms. Indzevska-Stojanovic
manages the foundation’s work with external partners
and has overseen programs on women’s and Roma issues,
legal statutes, and civil society development.
Mjellma
Mehmeti, of Macedonia, is vice-chair of the Bureau
of the Council of Europe’s Youth and Sport Directorate
in Strasbourg, France. She directs the organization’s
human rights program, which uses conflict resolution and
inter-cultural dialogue among young Europeans to promote
the value of human rights. She is the founder of the Association
for Emancipation, Solidarity, and Equality of Women, a
non-governmental organization that addresses conflict transformation
and the promotion of inter-ethnic dialogue. A tireless
advocate for human and women’s rights, Ms. Mehmeti
was named Young European of the Year by the Parliament
of the European Union in 2002.
Macedonia was spared the inter-ethnic
violence that raged through the Balkans following the break-up
of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, but it came close to civil
war a decade after independence. Violeta
Petroska-Beska co-founded and is co-director of the
Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at the University
of Skopje. As a researcher and activist specializing in peace
education, she designs and implements diversity and conflict
curricula for students in ethnically integrated classes from
preschool through university. Dr. Petroska-Beska also founded
the Center for Multicultural Understanding and Cooperation,
which brings together school-age Macedonian and Albanian
children to promote inter-ethnic tolerance.
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Conflict Background
BBC Country Profiles: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1067125.stm
International Crisis Group reports: http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/projects/project.cfm?subtypeid=9
United States Institute of Peace resources: http://www.usip.org/oc/sr/sr000327/sr000327.html
http://www.usip.org/library/regions/macedonia.html
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Related Organizations
Union
of Women's Organizations of the Republic of Macedonia
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Examples of Women Peace Builders
Mirjana
Dokmanovic is a founder and president of the Women’s
Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Serbia, a national
NGO that is part of the Network of East-West Women. Having
worked for years as a journalist in independent media in
the former Yugoslavia, she is currently designing a regional
conference of women’s NGOs and women journalists
on “Reconciliation, Lasting Peace, and Transitional
Justice in the Balkans—A Gender Perspective.”
Jasminka Dulic is
program director of the Women’s Studies Center in Subotica,
a multi-ethnic city in the Vojvodina region of Serbia. Dedicated
to reducing the ethnic tensions in the Yugoslav successor
states, she recently organized a conference on the political,
legal, sociological, and psychological determinants of political
life that promoted inter-ethnic tolerance and coexistence
and re-established relationships between scholars and researchers
from Croatia and Serbia severed during the war.
Zorica Trifunovic is
program advisor and consultant for the STAR Network of World
Learning in Belgrade. She is a co-founder of the Helsinki
Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, and has testified on
the role of women and peace building for a meeting of experts
hosted by the German government.
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Conflict Background
BBC Country Profile: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1039269.stm
International Crisis Group reports: http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/project.cfm?subtypeid=11
http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/project.cfm?subtypeid=10
United States Institute of Peace resources: http://www.usip.org/library/pa/serbia_montenegro/pa_serbia_montenegro.html
http://www.usip.org/library/regions/montenegro.html
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Related Organizations
Women's
Aid to Former Yugoslavia (WATFY)
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