A closer look at the political economy of gender-based violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Denisa Kostovicova, Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic and Marsha Henry

London School of Economics and Political Science

In February 2019, Edin Gačić, a former member of a notorious El Mujahideen Brigade of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, murdered a shopkeeper near the central-Bosnian town of Konjic. The hunt for Gačić ended in the death of a policeman and the wounding of another. Gačić, who was killed in the police intervention, had been recently released from prison where he had served 17 years, originally sentenced for the murder of his fellow soldier. From 2002, he had served a combined sentence for the additional murder of his mother, whom he killed while on leave from prison. This pattern of violence captures some of the effects of a toxic mix of institutional dysfunction (officials knew that Gačić’s release could have deadly consequences); the ready availability of wartime weapons still in circulation; unresolved and unaddressed conflict-related traumas; joblessness and economic insecurities in the 20+ year economic crisis in the region; and a normalised culture of misogyny. All of these relate to the political economy before, during and after the war. Yet few studies take stock of gender-based violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina, through a framework that illustrates the complex conditions that perpetuate the continuation of such patriarchal practices after the war.

The suffering of women over the three years of violence in the Bosnian war from 1992 to 1995 was profound and included systematic rape. Since then, violence against women has risen steadily, and new patterns of victimization have emerged. Victims of violence are increasingly younger including school-age girls; violence within families is inflicted by small arms, such as “Kalashnikov” rifles, kept by fighters after demobilization or sourced through informal (and illegal) means. At the same time, trafficking patterns have shifted. During the war and in the immediate post-war period, female victims of trafficking came mostly from outside Bosnia, from countries, such as Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Russia. After the war, women from Bosnia are trafficked both internally as well as abroad. Such pattern of violence in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina exemplifies not only the political economy and material basis of women’s victimization, but also the continuum of gender-based violence across war and peace, and time and space. This concept is used by scholars to capture that the war’s end does not herald peace for women. Men too are victims of gender-based violence during and after a conflict. Our primary interest in violence against women is motivated by a contribution to emerging work on women, peace and security which aims to make visible women’s often marginalized experiences of war and of its aftermath in an effort to make changes to policy and practice.

With that in mind we set out to examine what a continuum of gender-based violence approach might enable in the context of Bosnia, and to expand our understanding of the structural dimensions of violence. In our research visits which included interviews and interactions with practitioners working in the field of gender-based violence, the economic dimension was continually highlighted as the most prominent cause of the continuation of violence against women in the postwar period. But, it is precisely this structural dimension of the continuum that is less well understood, in the context of multiple causal factors that also include culturally enduring patriarchal practices and the associated stigma attached to women who challenge violent men in various post-conflict contexts.

Existing understandings of the economic dimensions of the continuum are fragmented. We know that women’s unemployment and dependence on male breadwinners makes it difficult for women to leave their violent partners, or that economic precarity may force women into sex work; similarly, former fighter’s suffering post-traumatic stress disorder may be exacerbated by continued joblessness and contribute to violent outbursts towards partners; likewise, women’s vulnerability as a result of unbridled neoliberalist policies and their gendered effects have been analyzed; so has their exposure to the unregulated informal sector because of poor employment opportunities, and their vulnerability to predatory transnational criminal networks.

In these accounts of gender-based violence, it is not clear how these disparate economic dimensions and incidences of violence, are interconnected. At the same time, it is not possible to separate analyses of gender-based violence during the war and after the war.

Ultimately, to date the literature has lacked sufficient explanations for the material basis of gender-based violence that is simultaneously shaped by an enduring war economy and post-war economic policies. The focus on the material basis of violence allows an understanding of how different incidences of violence and their structural underpinnings are interconnected. For example, the poor protection women victims of violence face because of a lack of implementation of gender-sensitive legislation. The lack of enforcement of laws has to do with competing pressures on state budgets as well as corruption that is directly linked to the survival in state institutions of war time actors many of whom were prominent figures in the war economy.

Since an understanding of the political economy is at the root of war-to-peace continuums and cycles of violence are widespread in Bosnia, problematizing and understanding the structural dimension of gender-based violence in post-conflict zones is essential. We show that the incentives for profit formed during the war have long-term adverse consequences especially for women’s welfare and security in so far as post-war economic and political governance is profoundly shaped by war-time actors. As such, war economies continue to define local post-war conditions including formal institutions tasked with implementing globally-mandated neoliberal reforms. Such a structural perspective is concerned with who actors are, what incentives they encounter, and what types of economic/political/cultural structures they rely on. Ultimately, we demonstrate the need to be attentive to the wider political contexts of localities whose material basis is defined by war even in a post-war period, and to global governance ideologies interacting with those local conditions in order to improve our understanding of the continuums and of persistent gender-based violence, both against men and women.

Read the full article: Drawing on the continuum: a war and post-war political economy of gender-based violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Dr Denisa Kostovicova is Associate Professor at the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She studies post-conflict reconstruction with a particular interest in the political and economic effects of conflict legacies on peace-building, including post-conflict justice processes. Twitter: @DenisaKost

Dr Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on the political economy of war and post-war reconstruction, with a particular focus on the links between informal practices, conflict and peace, and the role of international aid in peace-building.

Dr Marsha Henry is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her areas of research include critical military and peacekeeping studies, the political economy of gender-based violence in post-conflict settings, and intersectional feminist theories and methodologies. Twitter: @mghacademic

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