Ana Tikvic Bite

“Balkan countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro are countries in transition. Their origin goes back to the end of a conflict that in some cases became an armed conflict and concluded with the end of Yugoslavia. Since then these societies have been trying to create their own state, their own economy. In this long process, they have found issues difficult to deal with: poverty, for example, or gender inequality. We are still building our education system, and in that process we are trying to incorporate sexual education from primary to high schools. Unlike Croatia, unfortunately, Serbia nor Bosnia & Herzegovina have not even begun that process. Very likely, the powerful influence of the Orthodox Church is a very important factor in these two cases.

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And not having sexual education in schools is a very important problem since a lot of people don't even know what sexual harassment or gender-based violence are. In many cases, regardless their ages, we have met women not knowing that what they had experienced before coming to us is gender-based violence and therefore they do not know that there are legal ways to stop it.”