The Politics of Victims' Compensation in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina

National governments rarely award material and financial compensation for people that suffered injuries and traumas during violent conflicts on the basis of what is 'just' and what is 'deserved'. Instead, as I argue, only victims that possess a special skillset, authority or international standing achieve compensation. In Bosnia and Herzegovina (henceforth 'Bosnia'), a country with a legacy of a brutal conflict that redefined our understanding of humanitarianism and peacebuilding, thousands of war victims have undergone re-traumatising ordeals to achieve compensation for their suffering. While some, such as victims of sexual violence were recognised and offered financial and service-based compensation, others, such as victims of torture have remained without any material recognition of their suffering.

My research explains the differences between victim categories and their compensation in post-1995 Bosnia. I explore three main categories of victims - families of missing persons, victims of torture and sexual violence, and victims with physical disabilities and harm. I trace the history of compensation-making for each of these categories and show how families of missing persons were able to mobilise domestic and external resources while victims of physical injuries have not succeeded in generating any broader societal concern for their future within Bosnia and outside.

The answers I offer are the result of fieldwork in Bosnia from 2013 to 2017 and over 120 interviews with war victims, policymakers, representatives of international organisations and charity workers. I have also relied on local media reports, charity reports and primary legal documents. Theoretically drawing on a vast amount of scholarly literature in transitional justice, transnational advocacy coalitions, peacebuilding and development, I have designed an original conceptual model that explains how and why certain victim categories have been able to achieve compensation while others have failed. The model utilises ideas of moral authority, the ability to mobilise resources and the influence of international actors. At the same time, it recognises the critical impact of structural and contextual factors such as levels of pluralism, economic development and time lag from the end of the war.

Although my research is a case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is the complex phenomenon of victims' activism in the aftermath of wars that I explore. Unlike the majority of transitional justice literature that examines state- level justice outcomes, I am interested in the inter-category dynamics of redress in post-war states. Such an enquiry invites questions that are at the heart of the transitional justice scholarship, i.e. questions about how post-war societies deal with their violent past and how individuals and groups victimised by war pursue justice. Indeed, the broad research question I examine is: How do victims in post-war states pursue post-war justice? As I demonstrate in my research, victims utilise a variety of advocacy and framing strategies to achieve their goals at the domestic and international level. Instead of being passive recipients of support, many victim groups have transformed into political actors in their own right - a realisation that has only now entered into the field of transitional justice.

Several lessons can be drawn from my research and applied to international development and peacebuilding. Importantly, I show the multitude of side effects of external involvement in transitional justice. While giving voice to post-war communities traumatised by war has already entered agendas of many international organisations, not enough analytical attention has been paid to how supporting and giving voice to some victims may marginalise others. I thus challenge the application of the peacebuilding and development principles of 'do no harm' and conflict sensitivity in transitional justice interventions.