How to Repair the Harm after Violent Conflict in Bosnia? Results of a Population-Based Survey

Abstract

Debates about serious human rights violations and international crimes committed in the past usually start during times of political transition, that is when societies are moving away from a non-democratic regime and the new political elites are confronted with the fundamental question on how to address the heavy burden of their dark past. This question was posed in most countries of Latin America in the 1980s, in all countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s and in several countries in Africa and Asia during the last decade. The issue of ‘dealing with the past’ or ‘transitional justice’ is most often managed by elites, national and international, and the views and expectations of the local populations are rarely taken into account. Yet population-based research can yield interesting insights into strategies and mechanisms for dealing with the crimes of the past and for reconstructing the future. In this contribution we report on the findings of a population-based research in Bosnia in 2006 that dealt with several issues of post-conflict justice. The focus is on the issue of reparation for the harm inflicted, how it is perceived by the population in Bosnia, what forms it may take, and how to feed it into policy-making at the national and the international level.