In every war, rape has always been a dreadful weapon. Symbol of destruction of women as well as domination on the coming generations, it sometimes leads to births. During the Bosnian War, approximately 7.000 children were born in those conditions. Today, they are about twenty years old. They have to develop their identity in a country that is still torn apart by ethnic tensions. Sometimes hidden, often abandoned, their origin remains a taboo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It’s high time we gave them voice with our report and your support.

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Credit : ANDREW TESTA

We commemorate the 20th anniversary of the end of the Bosnian War this year. We want to meet these young adults who are now mature enough to understand their history. They are the ones who will build tomorrow’s Bosnian society. That’s why they need to be heard now more than ever.

How do they live as the living symbol of the war? What’s their place it the society? How do they construct their identity?

We will analyse the socialization of these individuals, in other words the process by which they integrate values and norms to forge their identity. The identity is built from an early age, in contact with the outside world (family, friends, society). So are they really rejected, stigmatized and ostracized, or on the contrary, are they fully integrated and recognized?

With your support, we will go in villages still divided by this community conflict, such as Sarajevo, Srebrenica and Mostar. We will visit orphanages as well as associations like Vive Zene Medica Zenica. These organizations will be of great help because they had been in direct contact with the victims. We will also meet the higher authorities to understand how the national reconstruction of Bosnia and Herzegovina also requires the recognition of the victims of war.

Who are we?

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We are Soraya, Mélanie and Claire, three students in journalism at IHECS. Before being colleagues, we are above all three friends with strong and different personalities. Mélanie is the camerawomen of the group, always seeking the most beautiful image. Soraya prefers the post-treatment, she likes precision. She’s the image editor. And finally Claire, is the most gifted to put the right words on the images. She’s the literary fibre of the group. Together, we form a team that always succeed in realising a wonderful result.

We believe in our project because we felt concerned about the story of these people even though we are more than 1.600 kilometres away from them. We see them as twenty years old people, just like us. A generation that hasn’t known the history but that nevertheless has to deal with its consequences. Nothing differentiates us from them except the place and the conditions of our birth. We feel invested of the mission to spread their word. We are convinced that, above the information it will bring, their testimony will free them from a heavy weight.

Fund and form

We are going to realise a twenty minutes film report that will be broadcast on January 2016. The young adults who were conceived by rape will speak about their experience, their expectations, their feeling about the current Bosnian society… We are going to create an exclusive report by raising with them subjects that have never been raised in the western medias.

You will be part of the project and the journey by regularly receiving news from our progress. We will feed the social networks and a blog. You will go out to meet those people with us day after day.

Sang Tabou

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