In the fight against rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where are the men?

To paraphrase one of Friedrich Nietzsche's most-cited sayings, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Rape and sexualized violence can kill, but those who survive it may emerge stronger. They need strength to testify against their perpetrators in court, strength to tell their husbands what happened, strength to carry on with their lives.

When Fatima*, a woman I interviewed in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) in 2014, finally mustered the courage to tell her husband that she was raped during the 1992-95 Bosnian War, he left the house. He returned home several hours later, but said nothing about what his wife had disclosed to him. Since then, the two have never spoken about the rape.

Dženana, another woman who agreed to talk to me, said it took her seven years to tell her husband what happened to her because she feared his reaction. Although he was initially supportive, he has become increasingly bitter. He wants to know, she said, why rape survivors can secure a monthly social payment as civilian victims of the Bosnian war while camp survivors like him receive nothing.

Fatima and Dženana were just two of the 66 women who told me their stories during my work in BiH between August 2014 and September 2015. The women were of mixed ages, coming from diverse rural and urban areas and belonging to different ethnic groups (Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serbs, and Bosnian Croats). Despite their heterogeneity, a central theme emerged from the interviews. The overwhelming majority of the women said they were not receiving the support they needed from their husbands. In a few cases, the women also said they were experiencing some form of domestic violence.

Spouses and partners have a critical role to play in enabling survivors of rape and sexualized violence to come to terms with their trauma and to rebuild their lives. To use the terminology of social-ecological approaches, the family unit constitutes a core part of survivors’ meso environment—that which exists between the macro and micro parts of their lives. When this environment is hostile, it can fuel a cycle of trauma. Twenty-one years after the war in BiH ended, some women are still struggling to break this cycle.

But while men are, in many cases, part of the problem, they are also part of the solution.

Where are the men?
Several major NGOs within BiH—including Snaga Žene, Viva Žene, and Medica Zenica—provide support to survivors, ranging from psychological and medical to legal and socioeconomic. Yet, critically, little attention is given to men, and this is a crucial gap within the civil society sector in BiH.

Work with survivors requires a comprehensive and holistic approach. This means focusing not only on individual women, but also on the wider contextual matrix that frames women’s daily lives, struggles, and interactions. In 1990, in her groundbreaking book “Bananas, Beaches and Bases,” the feminist scholar Cynthia Enloe posed a major question vis-à-vis international politics: “Where are the women?” Twenty-six years on, it is time to pose another critical question: “Where are the men?”

As in many societies, a pervasive stigma continues to surround the subject of sexualized violence in BiH. This, in turn, facilitates the pernicious circulation of myths, prejudices, and misinformation to the detriment of survivors who often feel marginalized and socially excluded. But stigma is only part of the problem. Not only did many of BiH’s citizens suffer in numerous ways during the Bosnian war, but they still suffer today in a depressed economic climate where high levels of poverty and unemployment are the ordre du jour. All of this contributes to a process of social atomization and fragmentation in which citizens are inwardly focused on their own personal problems and struggles.

In post-conflict societies, as sociologist Luc Huyse underlines, “Healing … has to start soon, as with time victims become further trapped in their pain and isolation.”

So the question remains: In BiH, which has experienced crimes at such high levels, where are the men in the fight against conflict-related rape and sexualized violence?

A competition of victimhood
In BiH, everybody is fighting for something—for recognition, for rights, for justice. In this highly pressured and competitive environment, survivors of sexualized violence are rarely seen as a priority. The fact that survivors living within the BiH Federation—one of the two governmental entities in post-war BiH—can apply for civilian victim of war status and receive a social payment has generated resentment and bitterness within particular sections of the population. Wartime victims of torture like Dženana’s husband, for example, receive no equivalent payment and have no status or rights in BiH.

On top of this disparity, in a society where large numbers of men fought in the war and/or were detained in camps, unresolved trauma remains a significant problem among men. In some cases, this trauma further adds to their wives’ suffering. A woman named Marija told me that her husband will only have anal sex with her. He refuses to “go” where his wife’s rapists “went.” When her husband is drunk, Marija said, he forces himself on her. She explained that he has his own war trauma—he was in Srebrenica when the town fell to the Bosnian Serb army in July 1995—and cannot deal with the fact that she was raped. When I asked Marija if she is afraid of her husband, she said simply, “Always.”

For Ana, the physical violence has stopped, but her husband still verbally abuses her on a regular basis. She said he experiences intense feelings of jealousy and worries she will sleep with another man. He knows that his wife was raped; she told him immediately. But he thinks his own trauma is worse than that of his wife—he sustained shrapnel injuries during the Bosnian war.

My interviews in BiH highlighted the juxtaposed themes of unsupportive husbands and traumatized husbands. But male trauma is discordant with Balkan cultural expectations of what it means to be a “real” man. That men frequently find their own ways of dealing with their trauma—for instance, by drinking excessively, gambling, being violent, or simply distancing themselves from their families—means that they may lack the emotional strength and resources to support rape survivors, including their own wives.

Engaging men
Several societies around the world are now including men in the fight against rape and sexualized violence. Rwanda’s Men’s Resource Centre and the Good Men Campaign in Cambodia are two examples. In BiH, it is similarly time to engage men in this fight.

This can be done in four key ways.

First, Bosnian NGOs that work with women survivors should place a far greater emphasis on the importance of family therapy as a complement to individual therapy. According to Marijana Senjak, a psychologist-psychotherapist based in Zagreb, working with survivors of rape and sexualized violence requires a “comprehensive approach”—and men are a crucial part of this.

Second, community events, workshops, and seminars—particularly aimed at men—should be organized so as to encourage and facilitate open discussion about rape and sexualized violence, their causes, and their effects on survivors. In 2014, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network made a documentary film about male and female Bosnian survivors of wartime rape and sexualized violence. The film, “Nečujni Krik” (“The Silent Scream”), was shown in several cities and towns throughout BiH, including Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Brčko. Some men, particularly young ones, came to watch the film, and this can be considered a positive step. Male survivors have an especially important role to play, through community-based events, in engaging fellow men on the issue.

Third, NGOs are needed in BIH to not only create a secure and confidential space for men to talk, but also to play a crucial role in educating men about rape and sexualized violence. The NGO Budućnost opened Muski Centar (Men’s Center) in 2010 in the north of BiH. The center works with men who have committed domestic violence and gives them an opportunity to speak about their concerns, problems, and needs.

Finally, rape and sexualized violence should be discussed in Bosnian schools to encourage young people—and particularly young men—to think about the issues and reflect on how they can become personally involved in the fight against these scourges of war. I will soon be embarking on a schools-focused project with the Tuzla-based NGO Snaga Žene to engage young people in the fight against rape and sexualized violence.

The “two schools under one roof” system that operates in parts of the BiH Federation—in which Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat children have their classes in different shifts or in different parts of a school—has contributed to fostering new divisions among the next generation. So, too, has the fact that young people learn different versions of subjects such as history and geography, depending on which school they attend. Teaching rape and sexualized violence prevention, which could form part of a broader citizenship education in BiH, would not only help to bridge some of these divides, but would also contribute to tackling the stigma that continues to surround these crimes.

Just as transitional justice cannot be simply about top-down processes, such as criminal trials carried out in the name of victims, the fight against conflict-related rape and sexualized violence cannot be only about United Nations Security Council resolutions, global summits, and greater media attention. It must be a bottom-up process in which both men and women play an active role.

In order to be part of the struggle against rape and sexualized violence, men need to better understand these acts and their long-term effects. Fundamentally, the key message that needs to be conveyed is that rape is a crime—not a choice.

*The names of survivors have been changed to protect their privacy.