RELLENO Y COMPACTADO DE ZANJA CON TIERRA COMÚN. UNIDAD: Metro Cubico (m3)

NGOs in Bosnia today generally focus on the following topics: 1) trauma rehabilitation, 2) post-war material reconstruction (rebuilding of destroyed industry such as factories and

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social and cultural infrastructure including roads, hospitals, and schools), 3) women’s rights and empowerment, 4) children’s support and development, 5) environment, and 6) intra- ethnic reconciliation. This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the different types of NGOs that presently operate in Bosnia, rather, it is a list of the most common. Faith-based NGOs,2 such as Nahla, on the other hand, also include additional foci including 1) religious rights, 2) rebuilding and development of religious monuments, and 3) religious education. Specificity of mission by different religious organizations is also dependent on the religious community they represent; thus, in the case of Nahla, the organization’s mission is the advancement and promotion of Sunni Islam. Furthermore, with the influx of non-Bosnian religious traditions (such as Mormonism, Hare Krishna, Shi’ism, Seventh Day Adventist and others), there are a number of religious organizations whose sole mission is promotion and recruitment to those faiths. I do not know exactly how many such organizations were are present in Bosnia in 2011, but based on my conversations with other scholars operating and working on Bosnia, I would estimate a few dozen.3

As the previous paragraph highlights, in the post-war period, NGOs have replaced a long-standing tradition of social networks and groups. A person’s social connections can

2 _{The international Muslim and Orthodox Christian communities, of course, have long traditions of social}

assistance. Although they may have less experience operating through formally constituted NGOs than their Western Christian counterparts, they have other assets those counterparts lack. The greatest of these is their presence and immense credibility in communities of their faith, as well as strong negotiating positions with local authorities who share their faith. Islamic Relief Worldwide and International Orthodox Christian Charities are among the international faith-based NGOs active in Bosnia and Herzegovina. [Leban 2003]

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Mojca Leban writes that: Many religious-oriented NGOs are working to overcome inherent divisions and other barriers to reconciliation. These organizations are among the more than 600 international NGOs active in Bosnia and Herzegovina (as of the end of the 1990s). Some of these organizations are explicitly religious-- i.e., they provide religious services. Other organizations, which are generally motivated by religious values but do not perform religious services, may be termed "faith-based." Faith-based NGOs engage in a range of activities, including promoting interfaith dialogue, providing immediate humanitarian aid, and fostering long- term reconstruction and sustainable development. [Leban 2003]

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determine what type of school one attends, and later what kind of job one secures. During the communist period one’s neighbors were often more important than family, as they replaced kin-ties broken by rural-urban migration. When resources and funds were scarce during the communist system, social networks, colleagues and neighbors became integral in helping people meet basic needs. Building one’s house required an extensive network of family and friends who volunteered their time and labor, and at times financial resources as well (Bringa 1995). This type of bond would not be possible without a strong attention to kin and community-based networks. For the women I worked with, in particular, who since the war have seen their economic and political status in Bosnia’s society diminished, NGOs and faith-based networks have become even more important as many of them have

become sole providers for the family, and are often at a disadvantage when competing with men for work opportunities. I have identified two different themes that characterize some of the experiences of women who join formal organizations, including: a) economic

empowerment and knowledge, and b) safety and support. But one constant remains, and that is, that these organizations provide a space where women can find someone to talk to at the very least, and where they feel like they belong.

As I discuss in Chapter 3, I conducted majority of my fieldwork at Medica Zenica in the city of Zenica, and Nahla located in Sarajevo. At the time of my fieldwork Medica was operating, but on a very basic level including women’s shelter, Infoteka, and counseling services. Through their activities Medica was able to secure limited funds from the local government in order to keep the shelter afloat, however, the running of the house was costly and challenging, but made possible by an incredibly dedicated and resourceful staff.

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Their most important resource, therapy--both group and individual—remained available and they continued to provide group therapy once a week. In addition, one of Medica’s projects was economic empowerment through job training and courses. Some of the courses offered included sewing courses for women who needed an additional set of skills in order to find jobs, and provide for themselves and their families. Another primary resources remaining in operation was Infoteka, a library and resource center located in center of Zenica. In addition to serving as a resource, Infoteka also regularly published pamphlets and reports regarding women’s rights at home and work. Other services, such as the mobile medical clinic and majority of other programming, had been shut down because of a lack of funding. Despite their lack of paychecks4, all the staff I interviewed expressed their special attachment to Medica and willingness to help continue its work. Through one- on-one interviews, and participant observation, I discovered that this attachment was related to the fact that some of the staff had at one point been patients of the clinic or had utilized Medica’s services in one way or another. The stories I collected at Medica spoke not only to these women’s experiences and expertise in being able to address the issues of trauma and gender-based violence, but also to their passion and dedication to the mission of helping women of Bosnia more broadly. The majority of the staff at Medica identified as conventional Muslims, however, and their clients came from all three ethno-religious traditions (with both rural and urban background). Equally, Nahla was an organization where Muslim women (but where non-Muslim women interested in Islam) could learn, socialize, broaden, and enrich their knowledge. As a faith-based organization, Nahla

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Despite being unpaid for a period of time many of the women were either supported by their husbands, parents or other family members.

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focused on Muslim women5 and giving them a chance to acquire different skills needed to succeed professionally, as well as actively participate in Bosnia’s economic, political and social life. The services provided by Nahla included counseling services (primarily for married couples), religious classes such as School of Islam and School of Qur’an, fitness and exercise classes, business classes, professional development classes, and foreign language classes. Ultimately, both conventional and pious Muslim women benefited from services provided by their respective NGOs.

An important point must be addressed here, and that is the importance of the feminist and Islamic feminist perspectives that guided the mission of each of the two NGOs where I conducted my research. Medica Zenica had a very specific feminist oriented mission rooted in western Feminist tradition and was a self-declared feminist women’s NGO, described here by Elissa Helms as:

…is one of a very few women’s organizations in Bosnia which describes itself as a feminist project. This terminology was introduced by the German feminists who started the project and wrote its first documents. However, the Bosnian women who helped to found Medica in Zenica and who now run it alone as a local organization have kept this feminist identity, having been compelled by the Germans’ stance to examine their own attitudes toward their identities as women and the meanings of feminism. [Helms 2003: 171]

Furthermore, Helms points out that the donor’s idea of feminism dominated Medica’s work and although the donor never explicitly defined what kind of feminism they wanted to uphold it was very much influenced by the western liberal feminist theory and practice (Helms 2003).

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Medica’s focus on addressing the needs of all women and the problems associated with social and political inequality can be thus contrasted with Nahla’s mission on educating and equalizing women within Islam rather than the society as a whole. Both Medica and Nahla’s programming was thus a byproduct of their feminist and Islamic feminist (and non- feminist) perspectives and the following discussion will get at some of the reasons as to why Medica focused primarily on domestic violence while Nahla’s programming included focus on marriage classes.