More than three decades have passed since the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo. During this period, important legal and political changes occurred. Survivors of conflict-related sexual violence who were largely ignored in the immediate post-war years gradually achieved legal recognition through sustained advocacy by survivor groups, women’s organizations and human rights institutions.
Bosnia and Herzegovina became one of the first countries in the world to establish a separate legal category for survivors of wartime rape. In 2006, survivors gained recognition within the framework of civilian victims of war legislation. Subsequent legal reforms expanded protections, and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted a new Law on the Protection of Civilian Victims of War, which entered into force in 2024. The law introduced additional rights, including priority access to medical care and rehabilitation services. Nevertheless, implementation challenges remain and access to rights continues to vary across administrative levels.
Kosovo followed a different path. In 2014, the Kosovo Assembly amended legislation to recognize survivors of wartime sexual violence as civilian victims of war. Recognition procedures were later operationalized through the Government Commission for Recognition and Verification of Survivors of Sexual Violence During the Kosovo War. Since 2018, survivors have been able to obtain official status and receive monthly financial compensation. The legal framework represented a major breakthrough after nearly two decades of silence. At the same time, stigma, disclosure concerns, and procedural barriers have continued to affect access to recognition.
Croatia adopted the Law on the Rights of Victims of Sexual Violence during the Homeland War in 2015. The legislation established access to compensation, psychosocial assistance and healthcare-related benefits for recognized survivors. Like Bosnia and Kosovo, Croatia acknowledged that wartime sexual violence required specific legal recognition beyond broader civilian war victim frameworks.
These developments represent significant achievements in transitional justice. Yet they also raise a question that receives far less attention.
What happens after recognition?
For more than twenty years, I have documented testimonies from survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and other post-conflict settings. My doctoral research examining long-term consequences of wartime rape repeatedly identified a gap between legal recognition and long-term support. Public discussions often focus on wartime violence, criminal accountability and compensation. Much less attention is devoted to how survivors live twenty, thirty or forty years after the violence occurred.
This gap became visible through three encounters that took place in Bosnia and Kosovo between 2021 and 2025.
In 2023, during a presentation of my book Rape: A History of Shame – Diary of the Survivors at Medica Zenica, I met a male survivor from Tuzla. Public discussion of wartime sexual violence rarely includes male survivors, and public disclosure remains uncommon. He explained that for many years he was unable to pursue recognition because of shame, fear of stigma and concerns regarding social exclusion.
Eventually, he applied for and obtained recognition as a civilian victim of war and began receiving compensation. However, his assessment of the post-war system was complex. While he acknowledged the importance of recognition, he also described a continuing sense of abandonment. More than thirty years after the war, he believed that psychological support remained insufficient and that broader social understanding of survivors was limited. His testimony highlighted a distinction frequently overlooked in public policy discussions. Recognition may acknowledge the violence. It does not necessarily address the long-term social consequences of living with that violence.
A different pattern emerged during a visit to Kosovo in 2021. Following a public event, a woman requested a private conversation. She described losing her fiancé during the war, being raped, becoming pregnant and later placing the child for international adoption. She subsequently left Kosovo and rebuilt her life abroad.
Unlike the survivor from Tuzla, she never entered any formal recognition process. She did not apply for legal status, compensation, or public acknowledgment. Her explanation was simple. The emotional cost of disclosure remained too high.
Her case illustrates an important limitation of reparations systems. Recognition frameworks can support only those survivors who are able to enter them. Many remain outside formal systems because of stigma, family pressures, fear of exposure or unresolved psychological distress. Their absence from official statistics should not be interpreted as an absence of need.
A third encounter took place in Ahmići in 2025 during a conference organized by the Kolo Women’s Group. There, I met a survivor who had dedicated much of her post-war life to preserving local memory and documenting the experiences of victims and survivors associated with the Ahmići massacre. Her work focused on education, remembrance and community engagement.
Her experience demonstrates a different trajectory. Her response took the form of active participation in preserving collective memory and historical consciousness. Yet her testimony also raises broader questions. Why do so many responsibilities connected to remembrance, education and survivor support continue to depend upon individual survivors and local organizations? Why are these functions not more systematically integrated into long-term state structures?
The three cases differ significantly. One survivor pursued legal recognition. One remained outside recognition systems entirely. One became involved in memory work. Yet all three point toward the same conclusion.
The consequences of wartime sexual violence continue long after legal processes have ended.
Over the course of my research, I have come to understand these experiences through what I call the Social and Political Nervous System (SPNS). The concept refers to the interconnected legal, social, institutional and political environments within which survivors continue to live after conflict. Wartime sexual violence does not affect only the individual body or psyche. It also affects relationships with institutions, families, communities and systems of public recognition.
From this perspective, recovery cannot be reduced to clinical symptoms or individual adaptation. Survivors interact throughout their lives with legal institutions, healthcare systems, welfare structures, family networks, public narratives and political decisions. These interactions shape long-term outcomes as much as the original violence itself.
The testimonies collected in Bosnia and Kosovo suggest that the greatest challenge facing survivors today is not the absence of legal recognition. Significant progress has been achieved in that area. The challenge is the absence of systematic long-term monitoring and support.
Few mechanisms evaluate how survivors are functioning decades after the violence. Limited data exist regarding long-term physical health outcomes, aging-related needs, social isolation, family relationships or economic vulnerability among survivor populations. Support services often depend on non-governmental organizations, donor-funded projects, or local initiatives rather than on coordinated national systems. Similar concerns have been raised repeatedly by international organizations and survivor advocates across the region.
This is particularly important because survivors are aging. Many are now entering older adulthood while continuing to live with consequences that extend beyond trauma in the narrow psychological sense. Chronic health conditions, caregiving responsibilities, economic insecurity, unresolved stigma and social isolation frequently emerge as long-term concerns. Yet few post-war policies were designed with a thirty-year horizon in mind.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Croatia have all made important progress in recognizing survivors of wartime sexual violence. Those achievements should not be minimized. Recognition, compensation and legal acknowledgment represent major advances compared with the immediate post-war period.
However, recognition is not equivalent to recovery.
Thirty years after the wars, the central challenge is no longer proving that wartime sexual violence occurred. The evidence is overwhelming. The challenge is whether post-war societies are prepared to develop coordinated legal, medical, psychological and social systems capable of accompanying survivors across the lifespan.
The experiences of survivors suggest that recognition should be understood not as the endpoint of justice, but as the beginning of a long-term responsibility.
Dr. Wioletta Rebecka is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and psychotraumatologist. An alumna of the University of Warsaw and Touro University in Los Angeles, where she earned her Doctorate in Psychology, Dr. Rebecka specializes in trauma related to war, sexual violence, and intergenerational harm. She is the author of Rape: A History of Shame – Diary of the Survivors (2021), with a Polish edition released in 2024. She developed the SERS method for trauma stabilization and recovery, and conceptualized the War Rape Survivors Syndrome (WRSS) framework, a pioneering model addressing the long-term impacts of sexual violence in armed conflict. She is based in NYC.
