The right to tell

This chapter will investigate the Sarajevo Women Court (the SWC), ¹ an alternative model that has been created to supplement the existing transitional justice repertoire. The SWC has introduced a feminist approach to justice as a supplement to the transitional justice mechanisms that have been established to address mass atrocities that took place from 1991 to 1999 as consequence of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a communist federation. The Yugoslav wars led to the creation of the first ad hoc tribunal with the mandate to investigate and prosecute the international crimes. The ICTY was a UN Security Council creation and lasted from 1993 to 2017. Initially, the victims and the civil society activists greeted its creation with enthusiasm. However, the enthusiasm slowly changed into disappointment in the retributive justice model. Judgment after judgement victims realised that punishing the perpetrators – although still deemed very important – would not bring them the justice and the truth they have expected. Women who were involved in the creation of the SWC sought for an alternative way for justice and truth seeking. The women told their personal stories of suffering that included emotions, empathy and solidarity and that covered a much wider range of topics than war crimes. The topics are distributed over five major groups: war against civilians – ethnic-militaristic-gender violence; female body as a battlefield; militaristic violence and resistance by women; persecution of the “other” in the time of war and peace; (un)declared war: and socio-economic crimes against women.