Women’s Courts, Yugoslavia
Set up at the end of 2010, the Women’s Court was created by 7 women from across countries of the former Yugoslavia. They began as the Initiative Board, and expanded to include members from 10 organizations, all from former Yugoslavian countries, and strived to create a space for justice for women. The Women’s Court was established as a space for women’s voices and their testimonies of injustices they experienced during the war and in peacetime and across the private-public continuum, and for their stories of organized resistance. Focusing on events that unfolded in the nineties, the women’s court paid attention to the continuation of injustice across the peacetime-wartime continuum.
Making a Start
Drawing from the experience of the World Court of Women inspired and run by Corine Kumar, these courts were convened across local, regional and national levels by the Initiative Committe for the Organization of Women’s Court. In preparing for it, the women held seminars, round tables, public debates, and presenttaions, as well as artistic events and setting up working groups to build the framework for analysis and engagement. The preparatory process was intended to be inclusive and democratic. In Yugoslavia, the preparations began in 2010.
The process links a subjective text (a woman’s testimony) with the objective analysis of political, socioeconomic, and cultural context of the violence that took place. It brought together expert witnesses to explain the contextual underpinnings of the violence, and a local and international jury that comprised men and women who enjoy high levels of respect among women and women’s organizations. The process does not end with a judgment, but a public condemnation and efforts to put pressure on national and international institutions, as well as the provision of evidence for collective legal action.
Making a Difference
The Women’s Court in Yugoslavia came to be as a result of institutional apathy. As the institutional legal system does not offer justice in a wholesome manner that respects a survivor’s needs or meets their experiences through the frame of justice, at the international and national level, these courts strived to create a way for women to become subjects of justice and to encourage them to create different legal practices and influence institutional legal system. The court became a space for women’s voices and testimonies about the injustices they faced during the war and in peace, and enabled the strengthening of networks of mutual support and solidarity as well as the creation of strong autonomous women’s movement. In sum, it created different feminist conceptions of responsibility, care, and security, to build a just peace. The Women’s Court focused on several categories of violence:
- Ethnically-based violence in the form of institutional harm, repression of society, and harassment by the border police based on ethnicity
- Militaristic violence including war against civilians and repression of those who resisted being forcibly mobilized in the armed forces
- Gender-based and sexual violence across the peacetime-wartime continuum, including rape and other forms of sexual assault and violence, and the political repression of women human rights defenders.
- Economic violence in the form of privatization as a crime against women and living in a constant economic crisis.
Making an Impact
Over two years of field work, the Women’s Court conducted 11 regional seminars, 10 trainings for public presentations, and 102 public presentations across 83 towns in the region. They produced 25 documentaries on the experiences of violence faced by women in conflict and peacetime and 10 publications and leaflets in all languages of the region. They also hosted 15 working consultative meetings and 5 regional discussion circles.
References:
https://www.rwfund.org/eng/2016/12/21/womens-court-feminist-approach-to-justice/
O’Reilly, M. (2016). Peace and justice through a feminist lens: Gender justice and the women’s court for the former Yugoslavia. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 10(3), 419-445.
