Women's Groups in the Former Yugoslavia

The horrors the war in the Former Yugoslavia and the suffering more than four million refugees and internally displaced persons, mostly women and children, have already been well-documented (UNHCR 1993). The new states ex-Yugoslavia have the brunt the refugee burden. According to the UNHCR, as July 1993 the estimated total asylum seekers from the former Yugoslavia in European countries was 750,000, whereas 3,380,000 were displaced persons and refugees within the region the former Yugoslavia itself. Local governments, NGOs, as well as international humanitarian organizations, are providing aid and helping refugees. Although the humanitarian aid is financially significant, this article will attempt to question a problematic assumption in refugee policythat refugees are taken care of as long they are free from the immediate dangers that forced them to flee. The pitfalls such a policy, especially as applied to refugees fleeing from ethnic conflict, become immediately apparent when the policy is contrasted with the political context the Yugoslav conflicts, as well as the experiences, needs, and problems refugees themselves. The ultimate search for ethnic-national oneness and the creation a hated other led to the violent disintegration the Former Yugoslavia. Millions refugees and internally displaced persons now face the problem reconciling their own notion belonging and identity with the new realities their lives. Many refugees have close relatives whose ethnic background differs from their own, or are themselves in ethnically-mixed marriages. As refugees, they live in ethnically-mixed refugee camps in the newly-recognized states in the region

Context (archaeology · Displaced person · Ethnic group · Ethnically diverse · Geography · Immigration · Internally displaced person · Political science · Politics · Refugee · Sociology · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Gender Studies · Law

• Ethnic-nationalism, wars and the patterns of social, political and sexual violence against women

  Maja Korac•Identities•1998

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