I was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the war, stories began to circulate, quietly, fragmentedly, sometimes as whispers, sometimes as warnings, about mass rape and sexual abuse during the war. Sexual violence as a tactic of war.
I had no idea what it entailed. I had never heard of this as a strategy, as something deliberate. I didn’t understand that sexual violence could be used intentionally, not as a byproduct of war, but as a weapon. And I understood even less that I came from a country where this had happened on such a scale.
Searching for Information That Barely Existed
My first instinct was to understand. To research what this crime really was, legally, socially, historically. But I found very little. At the time, conflict-related sexual violence was still a relatively underexplored and underreported topic.
Most of what I learned came from NGOs in the country I came from, from events and discussions I attended on the subject and from the few articles that existed at the time. Slowly, piece by piece, I began to build an understanding.
A turning point came when I interned at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. There, I saw how testimonies, legal frameworks and evidence come together around crimes that are so often silenced and did not existed within a legal framework.
From Curiosity to Purpose
At a certain point, this became my focus, my responsibility, even. I decided to study law. I believed that if we could build a strong and functioning legal system, survivors would feel safe enough to speak up and perpetrators could be prosecuted.
I thought I had found my purpose in life.
But even as legal frameworks improved and international recognition of these crimes grew, I encountered a painful reality: many survivors still did not want to talk about what had happened to them.
And I couldn’t understand why.
Why This Crime Is Different
Over time, I came to understand that sexual violence is fundamentally different from many other crimes. It is not only about physical harm, it is designed to humiliate, to degrade, to destroy a person’s sense of self. It is meant to shame not just the individual, but entire families and communities.
In conflict, it can be used to terrorize populations, to force displacement, and even as part of genocidal strategies when intended to destroy a group. To spread fear and tear entire societies apart.
And that is exactly why so many survivors remain silent.
Not because they do not want justice, but because the consequences of speaking can be devastating: stigma, blame, social exclusion, disbelief and fear. The violence may be inflicted on one body, but the shame is often imposed on that same person by society.
A Legal Turning Point: Rwanda and Bosnia
It was through cases from Rwanda and Bosnia that the world began to formally recognize the gravity of these crimes.
In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), in the landmark Akayesu case, recognized that rape and sexual violence could constitute acts of genocide under international law.
In 2001, the ICTY, in the Kunarac et al. (Foca) case, delivered the first convictions for rape as a crime against humanity, establishing that systematic sexual violence could be prosecuted at the highest international level.
These cases were groundbreaking. They changed international law. They gave language and legal recognition to crimes that had long been ignored, minimized and hidden in plain sight.
But they did not automatically break the silence.
The Hardest Task: Breaking Shame and Silence
At that point, my thinking began to shift. If legal systems alone were not enough, what else was needed? I realized that the greatest barrier was not only legal, it was social. It was about norms, taboos and deeply rooted ideas about shame, honor and victimhood.
So I began to ask myself: how do you create space for survivors to speak, without immediately confronting them with judgment, labels or pressure?
The Role of Art in Opening Conversations
That is where art came in.
Art has the ability to reach people where language often fails:
• It creates distance and safety, people can engage without immediately exposing themselves.
• It invites reflection instead of confrontation.
• It allows complexity and emotion to exist without forcing immediate conclusions.
• It shifts the narrative from silence to shared experience.
By working with artists, I found a way to open conversations in a more neutral and human centered way, not by focusing first on perpetrators or blame, but by creating space for recognition, empathy and dialogue.
Reaching the Wider Public
But opening conversations also requires reach.
That is why I believe in combining different forms of engagement:
• Podcasts, which create intimate spaces for stories, learning and reflection.
• Social media campaigns, which help normalize conversations and reach different generations.
• Public events and storytelling platforms, which bring people together and make the invisible visible.
All of this serves one purpose: to shift social norms, so that survivors are no longer isolated by silence and stigma.
What I Have Learned
I once believed that a strong legal system would be enough. Now I understand that it is only one part of the solution. Without social safety, justice remains out of reach for many. And that is where my work now lives, in creating the conditions where speaking becomes possible.
Because sexual violence in war is meant to silence. And every safe conversation that breaks that silence is, in itself, an act of resistance.