page_title: Nusreta Sivac
section_title: Activism
hierarchical_section_title: Nusreta Sivac / Activism
caption_attribution_description: English: Nusreta Sivac speaking at the 2006 Omarska camp commemoration
context_page_description: Nusreta Sivac is a Bosniak activist for victims of rape and other war crimes and a former judge. During the Bosnian War she was an inmate at the Bosnian Serb-run Omarska camp in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina where she and other women at the camp were raped, beaten, and tortured. After the camp's closure in August 1992 due to press coverage, she became an activist for victims of rape and is credited with helping in the recognition of wartime rape as a war crime under international law. She is a member of the Women's Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
context_section_description: That year Sivac escaped to neighboring Croatia where she and fellow inmate Jadranka Cigelj started to gather testimonies from hundreds of rape victims. She also joined the Women's Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina headquartered in Zagreb. In June 1995, they helped in preparing the first indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The accumulated evidence unearthed the severity of wartime rape and is considered by the United Nations (UN) as a large "turning point" in helping recognize it as a war crime. She went on to personally testify at the ICTY and helped imprison the man who repeatedly raped her at Omarska. She also testified in many other cases including in that of Radovan Karadžić, Bosnian Serb president of Republika Srpska. 30 individuals were convicted by the ICTY for rape with another 30 cases in progress as of March 2013.
  In 1997, she and Cigelj were featured in Calling the Ghosts: A Story About Rape, War and Women, an Emmy-award-winning documentary film by Mandy Jacobson and Karmen Jelincic that detailed their experience at Omarska camp. The film's premiere was sponsored by Amnesty International, the Coalition for International Justice, the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian law, and the Bosnian branch of Women for Women International.
  In 1999, Sivac returned to Prijedor. In 2000, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered $745 million in compensation from Karadžić to Sivac, Cigelj, and nine other women. In the summer of 2002, Sivac reclaimed and repurchased the apartment that she had been forced out of during the war. It had been occupied and her possessions there looted by a former colleague. After her return, the word "Omarska" was repeatedly painted by her apartment. Sivac was unable to regain the job she had prior to the war. In 2003, Sivac and over 100 other survivors and relatives of victims of the Omarska camp held a commemoration ceremony for the first time. In 2005, she was among 1,000 women that were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008, she supported the possibility of a regional court for war crimes, saying that "there are some obstacles that truly should be eliminated because constitutions of the states in the region do not allow for extradition, etc. The local judiciary should be trained more, more numerous, of course, should have more executives and judges."
  In 2012, she commented on the denial of crimes in Prijedor: "Current Serb authorities in Prijedor are constantly trying to erase the part of history between 1992 and 1995 and ensure that it isn't written about or spoken about. That hurts us the most. That part of history belongs to us, the citizens of Prijedor, and we can never forget nor are we allowed to because of the civilians who were killed here." She said that she carries "emotions, emotions and sadness for all those friends of mine who are no longer here and were killed just because they had different names. It is incomprehensible that in Prijedor, the town where we lived together, that that kind of crime could occur."
caption: Nusreta Sivac speaking at the 2006 Omarska camp commemoration
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