Zlatan Kovačević, the founder of SOS Bihać, has been gathering volunteers from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as well as abroad for the past four years to help people from the Una-Sana Canton who are in need. As a boy, he became one of the first civilian victims of war in BiH, and Kovačević’s many years of work on various projects demonstrate an ordinary man’s struggle and willingness to help others.
Polish-born Jewish legal theorist Raphael Lemkin first coined the term ‘genocide’ in his 1944 work ‘Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress.’ Lemkin’s description of genocide as entailing “criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group” laid the foundations for the Genocide Convention and genocide studies as a sociological discipline.
Combatting human trafficking remains among the major human rights issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Recent reforms, however, kindle hope that the country is making progress towards a more effective anti-trafficking framework. The elimination of trafficking will still require that Bosnia improve prevention efforts by fostering greater collaboration among political entities and with civil society, a particular challenge given mounting instability.
A group of citizens dissatisfied with the rights that their children receive in the area of Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (HNK) founded the association Roditelji djece sa invaliditetom (“Parenting Children with Disabilities”) with the hope of increasing awareness among competent institutions of the issues children with disabilities face.
Goli Otok, “Barren Island,” is most renowned as a camp for male political prisoners in former Yugoslavia, but little is known about the island’s history as a prison camp for women.