Sjaj ljudskosti – životne priče mirotvorki u Bosni i Hercegovini
Shining Humanity: Life Stories of Women Peace Builders in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author(s): Zilka Spahić Šiljak
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Sociology, Social development, Social differentiation, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Transkulturna Psihosocijalna Obrazovna Fondacija (TPO Foundation)
Keywords: BiH; peacemaking; peacemakers; leaders; humanity;
Summary/Abstract: Shining Humanity: Life Stories of Women Peace Builders in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a collection of biographies of eleven local peace leaders from varying ethnic, religious, and non-religious backgrounds. As these stories begin to illuminate the women’s deep faith in humanity, they can help to teach us how to become fully human beings in difficult wartime and postwar situations. The women selected for inclusion in this book showed genuine humanity (ljudskost) in the darkness of war and suffering but dared to imagine a life beyond the imposed boundaries of violence and fear. The goal of this book is to shed light on the women’s side of peace work and on women’s efforts to (re)build, to heal, to reconcile, to empower, and to embrace all the challenges and complexities of the post-war Bosnian realm. These women hope to teach the next generation that each and every person has the capacity to do something good, and for this to happen young people need only have faith that it is indeed possible to change things for the better. The author examines how moral imagination functioned in the lives of women peace builders as they proceeded to make progress in their efforts to bring peace to their communities; she looks for the social history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, its special dynamics, values, and norms; she discusses the role of religion in peacebuilding in an overwhelmingly de-secularized society, and finally she highlights in the women’s stories the achievements of ordinary women who made extraordinary journeys. This analytical account of the life stories of Bosnian women peace builders provides valuable anthropological material from the local Bosnian context, material that can offer guidance for other regional and even global peace builders. Readers will learn that peacebuilding in BiH was motivated by the concepts of both care ethics and feminist ethics of justice and compassion, as well as the surviving socialist ethics of unity and equality, and by the universal human rights norms codified in the legal system of BiH. Most of the peace builders in this book are religious, but their religion came into play only later as one of many equally important and relevant rationales for their peace work. These stories do not present an idealized image of women or of perfect peace activists, but rather they tell the tale of ordinary women who bore witness to horror but chose to live in hope.

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