Search

Previous research on victimhood during and after the Bosnian war has emphasized the importance of narratives but has not focused on narratives about victimhood or analyzed post-war interviews as a competition for victimhood. This article tries to fill this gap using stories told by survivors of the Bosnian war during the 1990s. In this analysis of the retold experiences of 27 survivors of the war in northwestern Bosnia, the aim is to describe the informants’ portrayal of “victimhood” as a social phenomenon as well as analyzing the discursive patterns that contribute to constructing the category “victim”. When, after the war, different categories claim a “victim” status, it sparks a competition for victimhood. All informants are eager to present themselves as victims while at the same time the other categories’ victim status are downplayed. In this reproduction of competition for the victim role, all demarcations that were played out so successfully during the war live on. War sociology – renewed analysis of ethnographic material from Bosnia

This paper presents a study that seeks to items on the various legal reforms that have maximized the debate about the need for protection of women against violence suffered because of their gender. The question to be resolved by the law, as the legal system, is to determine which is the surest way to guarantee to protect women as subjects of law. This is particularly important when discussing transitional justice mechanisms such as Colombia, where the victims of sexual crimes constitute a large universe of women who have suffered particular forms of violence because of the actions of the actors in the internal armed conflict. Este artículo presenta un estudio que pretende dar elementos sobre las diversas reformas legales que han maximizado el debate en torno a la necesidad de protección de las mujeres en contra de la violencia que sufren en razón de su género. La cuestión a resolver por medio del derecho, en tanto sistema jurídico, es determinar cuál es la manera más segura de garantizarlo para proteger a las mujeres como sujetas de derecho. Esto es particularmente importante cuando se habla de mecanismos de justicia transicional como el colombiano, en donde las víctimas de crímenes sexuales constituyen un gran universo de mujeres que han sufrido particulares formas de violencia a causa del accionar de los actores del conflicto armado interno.