Court Verdicts for Wartime Sexual Violence Show Disparities
By Selma Melez-Pezo
October 27, 2026
An analysis of Bosnian court verdicts in cases of wartime sexual violence shows deep inconsistencies in sentencing, a tendency to give more weight to mitigating circumstances, and a failure to recognise the long-term impact on survivors.
The woman was 26 years old when she was raped in wartime Sarajevo in 1992.
She lived in the Grbavica neighbourhood, which was controlled by Serb forces. Heading to the market one day, she and a neighbour were stopped by uniformed soldiers and taken to a nearby building. The soldiers robbed the neighbour and sent her away. The 26-year-old was left alone with one of the soldiers.
“He put a gun to my temple and forced me to satisfy him orally,” she said. “I started vomiting.”
The soldier, whom the woman heard other soldiers call Dragan, took her at gunpoint to an abandoned house, where he ordered her to undress.
“I begged him,” she recalled. “I begged him the whole time. “Please, don’t; leave me alone’. I told him I was a virgin, not to do this to me, that he would ruin my life, that I would not be able to live with it. He didn’t pay any attention.”
Decades later, her rapist has never been punished; the woman gave several statements to prosecutors but the case never went any further due to a lack of evidence.
Those who have seen their abusers stand trial have invariably been left disappointed.
Experts say stark inconsistencies have marred the way perpetrators of wartime sexual violence are punished in Bosnia and Herzegovina; mitigating circumstances are often given more weight than aggravating circumstances, and victims are frequently left feeling that their trauma has been ignored.
“If a sentence is not proportionate to the gravity of the offence, then it not only undermines the rule of law but also fails to fulfil its primary goal, which is creating a society in which such acts will not be repeated,” said Ajna Mahmic Catic, legal coordinator at TRIAL International.
“An inconsistent sentencing policy that is fundamentally inadequately established directly undermines survivors’ trust in the judiciary.”
Sexual violence as tool of persecution
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in The Hague convicted 32 people of crimes including sexual violence committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia.
The cases established that sexual violence was used alongside killings, beatings, looting and other crimes as a means of persecuting people because of their ethnicity.
“We showed that rape, enslavement, mutilation and other forms of sexual violence were part of a broader campaign of persecution during the conflict, used to sow fear and force the population to leave their lawful places of residence,” the Office of the Prosecutor and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals told BIRN. “This was not accepted right away.”
Before, crimes of sexual violence were often considered a personal act motivated by lust and sexual desire, which set them apart from other violent acts committed during war.
“There was also a tendency to wrongly characterise sexual violence as “incidental” or “opportunistic”, separating it from the context of the war in which it occurs,” they said.
BIRN analysed hundreds of cases involving wartime sexual violence handled by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, district courts in Bosnia’s predominantly Serb-populated Republika Srpska entity and cantonal courts in the mainly Bosniak and Croat Federation entity.
Such cases are extremely sensitive and often difficult to prosecute, said Ivan Matesic, Bosnia’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor and head of the war crimes department of the state prosecution.
He cited problems stemming from the passage of time, the trauma and vulnerability of survivors and witnesses and a lack of witnesses and evidence.
“Investigations are also hampered because, in the period immediately after the crimes were committed, investigative actions were mostly not taken or were rarely taken, so reports by the police and investigative bodies from that period mostly do not exist,” Matesic told BIRN.
Since the war, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has reached 49 final instance verdicts in cases of crimes against humanity, of which 29 involved the crime of rape. A total of 49 people were convicted. Sentences ranged from five to 42 years in prison. Some of the victims were minors, aged 12, 15 and 16. Some were held for months on end and raped daily.
The same court reached 59 final instance verdicts in cases of crimes against the civilian population, of which 31 involved the crime of rape. A total of 40 people were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to 13 years. The most common sentences were six and seven years.
In several cases, the family circumstances of the accused led to reduced sentences despite the gravity of the crimes and the lasting physical and psychological consequences suffered by the survivors.
Calls for sentencing policy review
At the entity level, cases involving wartime sexual violence are notable for the inconsistency of judgments.
In the Federation, sentences ranged from one year to 13 years and six months, for offences including the rape of women, girls and men, multiple rapes, sexual abuse in camps and a combination of sexual and physical violence.
The average sentence was just over six years, while in some cases the perpetrators, including those whose victims were minors, were sentenced to just a year in prison having struck plea agreements. Such agreements can allow the convicted perpetrator to avoid prison altogether in exchange for paying an 18,000-euro fine.
Sentences in Republika Srpska ranged from two to 15 years in prison. In the case of the shortest sentences, the courts cited mitigating circumstances. In one, for example, the District Court in Banja Luka cited the fact the accused was an older juvenile at the time the offence was committed. In some cases, the courts cited no aggravating circumstances at all, despite the crimes involving sexual violence.
In the Federation, some cantonal courts cited as mitigating circumstances the accused’s marital status, the fact he had children and no prior convictions, and his conduct during the trial. In one case, the court cited the fact that the accused had not committed any other criminal offences since the crime in question. The passage of time was also taken as a mitigating circumstance, as was the accused’s advanced age.
In the autonomous Brcko District, sentences ranged from four to 15 years, and most commonly between four and six years even in cases of multiple rapes.
The cases in Brcko include that of Monika Karan, one of the few women convicted of war crimes in Bosnia. Karan was found guilty in 2013 of the psychological and sexual humiliation of detainees in the ‘Luka’ camp. The court found Karan had forced a detainee to strip naked, touched his genitals and forced him to touch her under threat of death.
Though finding that Karan’s acts caused her victim great psychological suffering, the court sentenced her to just four years in prison – below the statutory minimum.
As mitigating circumstances, the court cited her age at the time the offence was committed – 26 – as well as her family circumstances and the absence of prior convictions.
“Unfortunately, sexual violence leaves lasting consequences on victims, and such lenient sentences do not reflect the seriousness of that crime,” said Midheta Kaloper, head of the Association of Victims of War – Foca 92-95.
Experts say that overly lenient sentences undermine public trust in the judicial system and discourage victims from reporting violence.
“That is why it is high time that the sentencing policy was seriously reviewed,” Kaloper told BIRN.
“Institutions and society need to send a clear message that such acts must not be tolerated. Victims’ associations have advocated and appealed for these cases to be tried exclusively before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
‘Long-standing disproportion’
The cases analysed by BIRN invariably feature the same elements: threats involving weapons, knives and bombs. The survivors often said they did not resist out of fear they might be killed; sexual violence did not occur as an isolated act, but as a means of control and intimidation.
According to TRIAL International, verdicts frequently fail to take into account the deep psychological and physical trauma survivors still live with, the fact that sexual violence against a particular person was committed several times, that they had a family and children, or that they were a minor at the time.
“A long-standing disproportion between the gravity of the offences and the sanctions imposed has certainly been observed,” Mahmic Catic said of cases heard in Bosnia.
The application of mitigating and aggravating circumstances is “inconsistent across Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in some cases arbitrary”, she told BIRN.
Mahmic Catic also expressed concern about the use of plea agreements and the practice of converting a one-year prison sentence into a fine.
“As a consequence of such conduct by the courts, some convicted war criminals do not spend a single day in prison,” she said.
“What is extremely contentious is the fact that the injured parties have almost no influence over the conclusion of the agreement, the terms of the agreement, or the court’s acceptance of the agreement and the imposition of the sentence provided for in the agreement,” she said.
“Ultimately, when the prison sentence for wartime sexual violence is shorter than the one prescribed by law.”
Kaloper said: “When courts impose minimal sentences for proven sexual violence, an extremely dangerous message is sent that the gravity of this criminal offence of war crimes has not been adequately recognised and punished.”
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina said it “strives to ensure the protection and dignity of witnesses and injured parties through the law. This includes the possibility of ordering protective measures so that the identity of witnesses is not disclosed, such as testifying under a pseudonym, as well as additional protective measures, such as the use of technical means for altering image and sound, with image and voice distortion during testimony”.
Over the past two years, the court’s Witness Support Section has provided assistance and support to around 80-100 witnesses per year in war crimes cases, of whom roughly one third were witnesses in cases involving sexual violence.
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina defended its record on cases of wartime sexual violence, telling BIRN:
“The number of prosecuted cases and convictions, the sentencing policy, and the value and number of awarded property-related claims send a clear message that wartime sexual violence will not go unaddressed.”
“Furthermore, it is worth noting that in cases heard before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina – starting with the very first cases involving sexual violence – it was established, for the first time before any international or national criminal court, that sexual violence constitutes a crime against humanity in the form of gender-based persecution. All of this may encourage victims of previously undocumented crimes to come forward.”
