Post-Conflict Masculinities and Vulnerability: Researching Male Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in the Former Yugoslavia

While the conflict in Bosnia Herzegovina was widely known for the strategic rape of thousands of women, men were also victims of sexual violence, mainly in the various detention camps across the country. Thomas Osorio will provide an overview of how the judiciary has treated conflict-related sexual violence against women and men, based his wide expertise in the field. Heleen Touquet will critically examine the silence on male victims in the country in the current day, paying particular attention to service provision, court cases and publications on conflict-related sexual violence, noting that their absence in the public debate is linked to prevailing gender norms and masculinities. She will also discuss two recent documentaries in which male survivors have been given a voice and look at how conflict-related sexual violence is framed in these films.

Heleen Touquet is a researcher and lecturer and the University of Leuven Belgium and is currently a visiting fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. She has published on postethnic mobilisation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the framing of reconciliation in EU-Western Balkans relations and LGBT rights and EU enlargement, as well as issues regarding male survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. She currently works on a research project on on male survivors in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, together with Thomas Osorio.

Thomas Osorio is a Research Fellow at KU Leuven in Belgium investigating male directed sexual violence perpetrated during conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Prior to this he served for 23 years in the countries of the former Yugoslavia as UN Rule of Law and Transitional Justice Adviser to UNDP, Human Rights investigator for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Investigations Coordinator for the UN Commission of Experts for the Investigation of War Crimes (known as the Bassiouni Commission), Head of Mission to Croatia for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and operations officer in charge of exhumations conducted by the ICTY on the territory of Croatia.