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Roses are Red, but I am Blue: Reflections from Bosnia after International Women’s Day
Written by Velma
After surviving a war and struggling through university while living away from home in Sarajevo without financial support, I thought I had finally made it to somewhat safer ground when I was hired to work at a state institution in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian educational sector. I was excited and hopeful because […]
Author Archive
Velma
Founder and Executive Director of the Post-Conflict Research Centre (PCRC), Velma Šarić, has extensive academic and professional experience in the fields of sociology, genocide studies, international law and war crimes. She obtained her BA in Political Science at the University of Sarajevo’s Faculty of Political Science and is currently pursuing her MA in Sociology. Šarić is a journalist by training and has worked for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN). She has also worked as a researcher on numerous projects, publications and films about the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, and has planned and implemented several successful Sarajevo-based international summer school programs, conferences, and workshops focusing on the themes of genocide, justice, peace-building and reconciliation. Additionally, Šarić has worked as the Bosnian producer on the PBS film, "Women, War, and Peace", and the documentary "USPOMENE 677", which reveals the legacy that concentration camp detainment has left behind in BiH by observing the day-to-day experiences of 3 BiH teenagers and 3 former concentration camp detainees. Šarić recently coordinated the first UN workshop focusing on strategies for genocide prevention in Bosnia and organized a conference on concentration camp detainment in coordination with the Association for Concentration Camp Detainees in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 2010.
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Money Matters: Saving a Life in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Written by Velma
Several years ago, my middle-aged father was chopping wood in the forest behind our country cottage. After not returning home on time, my mother went out searching for him. As she got closer to the forest, she heard his screams. It turned out that a tree had fallen on his […]
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Thriving together in the economic storm
Written by Velma
The current economic crisis has no doubt affected every country in one way or another. I can only speak of my own experience. As I described in my previous blog, many citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina are dependent upon remittances from their relatives living in more developed parts of the world. The 1992-1995 war displaced […]
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Bosnia: A Landscape of Lost Dreams?
Written by Velma
The problem of labor in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) is less a problem of intergenerational competition than a problem of general unemployment and lack of opportunities for all. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, as in many countries around the world, villages are “aging.” This means that young people are leaving rural areas, which provide few […]
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Peace is an act, not a state of being
Written by Velma
The question of peace has haunted me ever since I was a teenager. This is hardly surprising because I, like many of my fellow citizens, spent my adolescence during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, witnessing and experiencing many of the horrors which the rest of the world saw second-hand through the […]
