Sarajevo, 28 and 29 October 2013
Two very well-attended Outreach lectures on the subject of wartime sexual violence were this week held in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On 28 October, the venue for the lecture was the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology (SSST), and the second talk was held the next day at Sarajevo University’s Faculty of Political Sciences.
Daniela Kravetz, an ICTY trial attorney with many years of experience in the field of gender-based violence in armed conflicts, explained various aspects of crimes of sexual violence, drawing examples from some of the precedent-setting ICTY jurisprudence in this area. Following her presentation, Daniela engaged the students and professors in discussions about what they had heard, encouraging them to share their opinions and contribute to the dynamic of the sessions.
Demonstrating their solid understanding of the issue at hand, SSST students posed a number of interesting questions, positing specific examples to test where the boundaries lie for the prosecution of wartime sexual violence within international humanitarian law.
The Sarajevo University students in their turn were particularly keen to learn more about the relationship between sexual violence and genocide in light of the ongoing ICTY trials of Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić.
Both presentations were warmly received by those in attendance. “The presentation provided a synthesis and an overview of lessons learned by the ICTY in prosecuting wartime sexual violence. It was very informative and will be very useful for the students”, said one of the attendees at the Faculty of Political Sciences.