Today, on the streets of Belgrade, you could see banners saying ‘It has never happened to anyone’, and we all share that wish.

Today’s generations know little about what really happened in the war and what the role of women was in that period, so the Jelena Šantić Foundation (JSF) launched the project „Activist heritage – Women’s stories behind the conflict and crisis in the Western Balkans“, with the aim of exposes the roles of female activists in the history of the peace building process in the post-Yugoslav space, as well as to present their stories to the widest audience. In this connection, a research was carried out, The Never-Ending Quest for Senss: Women and Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Hercegovina and Serbia, which was conducted by Adrijana Zaharijević and Zaltoborka Momčinović Popov.

The study was based on the results of reflection on the scope of women’s peace activism in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and interviews conducted during 2021 with female activists of different generations. The goal was to try to explain the context in which we live and act and to compare the thoughts of those who ask for peace to be far more than the absence of war, how. To the extent that this text is a chorus of voices of women who are united by it, they explain what does not exist, and could and should have happened, said the researchers in the study itself.

As Jelena Šantić (1944–2000) once said: „True sanctification comes when you are aware of what you did, not what they did to you.“ Without realizing one’s own mistakes, there can be no true sobriety.“

... Therefore, answering the question of Žarana Papić whether there will be a future at all, we can say after the book by Adriana Zaharijević and Zlatiborka Popov Momčinović - it will be as long as we cross borders every day, Dubravka Stojanović reminded us.

The book copy in English can be downloaded here.
For your hard copy of the book, please write on irina@fjs.org.rs