Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina held demonstrations on October 14 in Sarajevo, Banja Luka, and many other cities and towns to draw attention to femicide and call for the legislature to pass laws against it.
The demonstrations came amid outrage over the strangulation death of a 32-year-old woman on October 11, allegedly at the hands of her husband, in the town of Bihac in northwestern Bosnia. Police said the woman’s husband was found hanged on October 13 and cited suicide as the cause of his death.
Dozens of demonstrators, mostly women, turned out in Sarajevo, asking authorities to introduce femicide -- defined as a hate crime against women motivated by the victim's gender and a sense of superiority -- into legislation, making it a criminal offense.
The demonstrators also urged the government to harmonize criminal laws with the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention.
The nongovernmental organization Women's Network of BiH took part in the demonstration in Sarajevo, demanding action from the government.
"We women must be loud and speak on behalf of all those murdered women,” said Selma Hadzihalilovic of the Women's Network of BiH. “We owe them at least that, and we also owe it to all women who are exposed to any risk of being killed. We want to scream [away] that silence, so the cry would be as loud as possible."
Enisa Rakovic of the NGO Women's Voice stressed that women in Bosnia will no longer remain silent.
"We, the women of Bosnia and Herzegovina, have united to raise our voices and ask the decision-makers to change the legislation, to include femicide in the law and to apply the Istanbul Convention, which has been signed but is not being applied," Rakovic said at the Sarajevo demonstration.
According to data from the Agency for Gender Equality of Bosnia and Herzegovina, more than 60 women have been killed by their husbands since 2015. But the cases have been prosecuted as murders because femicide is not recognized in Bosnian law.
The agency also says that every third woman in Bosnia is a victim of violence, and half of women over the age of 15 have experienced some form of psychological, economic, or physical abuse.