On the occasion of June 19 – the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict – Women in Black, the Autonomous Women's Center, and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights are organizing a protest in black and in silence titled “We Remember Women Raped in War,” on June 19, 2025, from 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM at Republic Square in Belgrade.

Through this action, we express our solidarity with all women and girls who have been victims of wartime sexual violence – both during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and in today's armed conflicts around the world. Women and girls are not “collateral damage” or incidental victims; they are deliberately targeted in acts of sexual violence that occur even in times of peace and escalate during crises and wars. This is why we are not calling merely for wars without sexual violence, but for a world without wars and without sexual violence.

As citizens of Serbia, we also remind the public that Serbia is the only country in the region that has still not recognized women who survived sexual violence in war as civilian victims of war. We emphasize that the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina did so with the law from 2006, Kosovo from 2014, Croatia from 2015, and Republika Srpska from 2018. Therefore, we demand amendments to the Law on the Rights of Veterans, Military Invalids, Civilian War Invalids, and their Family Members, to explicitly recognize women who survived wartime sexual violence as civilian victims of war, regardless of their ethnicity. At the same time, we demand a consistent shift away from the culture of impunity and the implementation of effective and fair prosecutions of perpetrators, to provide at least a minimum of institutional justice for the victims.

The International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict has been marked since 2015, when the United Nations General Assembly established this date in order to “raise awareness of the need to put an end to conflict-related sexual violence, to honour the victims and survivors of sexual violence around the world and to pay tribute to all those who have courageously devoted their lives to and lost their lives in standing up for the eradication of these crimes.”

Belgrade, June 18, 2025
Women in Black
Autonomous Women's Center
Youth Initiative for Human Rights