When describing sexual violence as a ’weapon of war’ or as systematic in the setting of a conflict, many times there is no distinction between how it is used during different types of conflicts. Moreover, they are often discussed as either a crime against the ”enemy” or a crime against women. This research seeks to describe sexual violence during the genocides of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and to find whether there is an underlying genocidal intent. It also aims to emphasize the intersectional nature of such crimes — the targeting of a woman on the basis of both gender and group belonging. With the use of books, journal and research articles, reports and interview transcripts — this paper is based on a qualitative research method aiming to describe the underlying intent of the strategic use of sexual violence targeting women in genocide. It is the interpretation of the gathered material and theories which enables the discussion to take form. The genocidal intent behind rapes and sexual violence is not only to use women as reproductive vessels, prevent births within a group and inflict such injuries that would make a woman suffer and become less worthy in her community — but also to humiliate a group through sexual violence in a way that fragments it into elimination. By acknowledging the heightened effect sexual violence and its genocidal intent has on the intersection of group belonging and gender, women’s suffering is not overshadowed by the atrocity of genocide. Women are often discriminated against on either the basis of ethnicity or gender; however, when one emphasizes both elements as reasons for women being targets of genocidal sexual violence, perhaps the crimes could be properly dealt with and responded to by the international community. The research concludes that the systematic use of forced impregnation, mutilation, sexual humiliation and targeting of female identity carries a genocidal intent — resulting in the fragmentation of cultures and communities and furthers female subordination. The crime of genocidal sexual violence is a crime against the individual woman and the group of which she belongs.

The thesis covers foreign military interventions in Somalia (1992-1995) and former Yugoslavia (1999). First, the definition of the humanitarian intervention is presented as well as factors influencing the success of intervention. Then both cases are analysed using the factors defined earlier. The success of the intervention is sought in two realms. First, whether the relevant case corresponds with the definition of the humanitarian intervention. Second, whether the aims set at the beginning of the intervention were achieved. According to the author the intervention in Somalia did not succeed, although it had better prospects to achieve the aims than the bombing of Yugoslavia at first sight. The Kosovo case was, on the contrary, a successful humanitarian intervention, although it was a very controversial example of the use of military force.

This thesis explores the work of historians, history teachers, and NGO employees engaged in regional initiatives to mitigate the influence of enduring ethnocentric national histories in the Balkans. In conducting an ethnography of the development and dissemination of such initiatives, I queried how conflict and controversy are negotiated in developing alternative educational materials, how “multiperspectivity” is understood as a pedagogical approach and a tool of reconciliation, and how the interests of civil society intersect with those of the state and supranational actors. My research sought to interrogate the field of power in which such attempts to innovate history education occur, with attention trained on the values encoded and deployed in this work.

The master's thesis represents an analysis of the sources of law, case law and literature concerning the doctrine of command responsibility. Analysis itself is preceded by the description of historical development of command responsibility. Aim of the analysis is to identify requirements of command responsibility set out by the ad hoc tribunals and requirements of command responsibility according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, to compare those requirements and to find out most significant differences between the two approaches. Analysis provides that according to the Rome Statute there are two more requirements than according to the ad hoc tribunals' case law. Firstly there is the requirement of causal relationship and secondly there are two categories of superiors introduced - the military or military-like commanders and other superiors. Newly, there are slightly stricter requirements of responsibility for the former category than for the latter. Benefits of this thesis include the identification of requirements of command responsibility in Czech language.

In this thesis I explore the effects of the recent introduction of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to the post-conflict and postsocialist discourse of Croatian psychiatry. In recent years Croatian psychiatrists have been faced with a significant increase in the number of reported cases of various types of war-related disorders. PTSD, in particular, is spreading among the population of veterans from Croatia’s Homeland War that lasted from 1991 to 1995. To explore the effects of the introduction of PTSD to the discourse of Croatian psychiatry I am raising the following questions: (1) how was the diagnostic category of PTSD introduced; (2) how are Croatian war veterans encouraged to communicate their traumatic experiences; (3) how are ideas about the effective treatment of PTSD reproduced, transformed, and resisted by individual medical practitioners? In the final analysis, I argue that PTSD in Croatian psychiatry is constituted in a way that makes it both a medically recognizable form of emotional suffering and an instrument in post-conflict governmentality.

Notwithstanding a broad range of internal and external stresses, Macedonia was the only republic to attain its independence peacefully from the otherwise violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Subject of a timely and sustained international response, it was feted as a rare preventive success for the international community. Whilst not necessarily decisive, this mobilisation helped ensure a non-violent transition to independence. Yet, much to the surprise of outside observers, Macedonia would fall into conflict a decade after independence, when self-styled freedom fighters purporting to represent the local Albanian community launched an eight-month insurgency in the name of political and cultural equality. Triggered by a coalescence of political, nationalist, ideological and criminal interests, the insurgency had complex roots, as much an intra-Albanian putsch as a struggle for greater group rights. Regardless of their precise genesis, from the perspective of conflict prevention, the events of 2001 challenge popular assumptions of Macedonia as an international success story. Above all, they reinforce the need for external actors to incorporate short-term strategies of prevention targeting immediate sources of instability within a more comprehensive, long-term framework that addresses structural, underlying conflict causes. Indeed, whilst proximate threats to Macedonian stability were addressed, fundamental risk factors remained, namely social polarisation, a large ethnic minority disenfranchised with the state, economic under-development, high levels of organised crime and corruption, a weak rule-of-law and continuing regional uncertainty. These were partly aggravated by the mistakes of a complacent international community, whose engagement in the country, accordingly, receded over time. In particular, the dissertation is critical of the European Union for its initial failure to articulate a genuine pathway to membership for Macedonia and the broader western Balkans, as well as the handling of NATO's military intervention in neighbouring Kosovo. Of course, in any preventive endeavour, the international community can only do so much; in the first instance, responsibility lay with unresponsive Macedonian institutions, who failed to adequately address legitime Albanian demands dating from independence. Be that as it may, the international community was culpable for its failure to sufficiently apply the formidable soft-power leverage it wields over a weak Macedonian state to implement reforms that, conceivably, could have precluded the outbreak of armed conflict. As a case-study of prevention, Macedonia holds instructive lessons for scholars and policymakers. Yet it remains under-researched. Examining the period 1991-2001, this investigation analyses precisely why and how Macedonia avoided violence during the process of Yugoslav dissolution yet ultimately fell into conflict, and extrapolates broader lessons that may be applied to other at-risk societies. Its purpose is to advance understanding of a poorly understood country, and contribute knowledge to key on-going international security debates. Highlighting the inter-connectedness and trans-national character of contemporary security threats, it posits that the major powers have a practical interest in addressing emerging intra-state crises, even when the putative national interest appears marginal. To facilitate more timely multilateral responses, it calls for the de-nationalisation of security, and its conceptualisation in international - as opposed to strictly national - terms.

Notwithstanding a broad range of internal and external stresses, Macedonia was the only republic to attain its independence peacefully from the otherwise violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Subject of a timely and sustained international response, it was feted as a rare preventive success for the international community. Whilst not necessarily decisive, this mobilisation helped ensure a non-violent transition to independence. Yet, much to the surprise of outside observers, Macedonia would fall into conflict a decade after independence, when self-styled freedom fighters purporting to represent the local Albanian community launched an eight-month insurgency in the name of political and cultural equality. Triggered by a coalescence of political, nationalist, ideological and criminal interests, the insurgency had complex roots, as much an intra-Albanian putsch as a struggle for greater group rights. Regardless of their precise genesis, from the perspective of conflict prevention, the events of 2001 challenge popular assumptions of Macedonia as an international success story. Above all, they reinforce the need for external actors to incorporate short-term strategies of prevention targeting immediate sources of instability within a more comprehensive, long-term framework that addresses structural, underlying conflict causes. Indeed, whilst proximate threats to Macedonian stability were addressed, fundamental risk factors remained, namely social polarisation, a large ethnic minority disenfranchised with the state, economic under-development, high levels of organised crime and corruption, a weak rule-of-law and continuing regional uncertainty. These were partly aggravated by the mistakes of a complacent international community, whose engagement in the country, accordingly, receded over time. In particular, the dissertation is critical of the European Union for its initial failure to articulate a genuine pathway to membership for Macedonia and the broader western Balkans, as well as the handling of NATO's military intervention in neighbouring Kosovo. Of course, in any preventive endeavour, the international community can only do so much; in the first instance, responsibility lay with unresponsive Macedonian institutions, who failed to adequately address legitime Albanian demands dating from independence. Be that as it may, the international community was culpable for its failure to sufficiently apply the formidable soft-power leverage it wields over a weak Macedonian state to implement reforms that, conceivably, could have precluded the outbreak of armed conflict. As a case-study of prevention, Macedonia holds instructive lessons for scholars and policymakers. Yet it remains under-researched. Examining the period 1991-2001, this investigation analyses precisely why and how Macedonia avoided violence during the process of Yugoslav dissolution yet ultimately fell into conflict, and extrapolates broader lessons that may be applied to other at-risk societies. Its purpose is to advance understanding of a poorly understood country, and contribute knowledge to key on-going international security debates. Highlighting the inter-connectedness and trans-national character of contemporary security threats, it posits that the major powers have a practical interest in addressing emerging intra-state crises, even when the putative national interest appears marginal. To facilitate more timely multilateral responses, it calls for the de-nationalisation of security, and its conceptualisation in international - as opposed to strictly national - terms.

This work is dedicated to the imagination of migrant communities from former Yugoslavia contextualized in their relation to the history, space and culture. The empirical basis of this work is grounded in the contemporary history of the migration vagues from former Yugoslavia. The first part of the work deals with the methodology and theory relevant for the following case studies that form the second part of this work. Its third part consists in history of the three migration vagues - political, economical and refugee migration. The sources of this work are heterogeneous and they are partly issued from the narration of the informants during several in-depth interviews and participant observation. The backbone of this work consist in the case studies focusing on the historical memory, lived space and popular culture of the migrant communitites from the former Yugoslaviain France, Austria and other European countries.

This study discusses the process of identity-building among second-generation migrants from former Yugoslavia, living in the Southern Region of Sweden, Skåne. The findings of this study have shown that respondents' identity construction is fluid and depends on many factors that influence it, which vary from one individual to another. For instance, language, culture, values, norms, how individuals were raised and where they were born. Moreover, depending on the individuals' experiences and personal choice. Some individuals maintain and reproduce their identity by using the parent’s mother tongue to speak with their family at home and maintain the culture by making Serbian/Bosnian food and choosing to listen to Yugoslavian music. I found that some individuals born in former Yugoslavia feel belongingness to Sweden, where they grew up and were raised instead of where they were born. The feeling of belonging differed from one respondent to the other. Some respondents showed their sense of belonging through feelings and emotions they have attached to the country they were raised in (Sweden). They have established bonds that make them see their belonging to Sweden as necessary. Others attributed their belonging to their environment, place where they were born, or parent's country of origin.

No description available.