At the end of 2010, organisations – Initiative Board members (Women Studies Center and Center for Women War Victims (Croatia), Women to Women (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Anima-Center for Peace Education (Montenegro), Kosovo Women’s Network (Kosovo) and Center for Women’s Studies and Women in Black (Serbia)) started joint regional women’s initiative for the organisation of the Women’s Courts in the former Yugoslavia.

Women in Black are the carriers of program activities in organizing the Women’s Court; their activists arrange and coordinate all activities with the representatives of the organizations – members of the Initiative Board.

What is the Women’s Court?

• A space for the women’s voices and for their testimonies of the injustices they have experienced during the war and the peacetime;
• A space for the women’s testimonies of violence, in both the private and public spheres;
• A space for the testimonies of the organized women’s resistance

Why did we organize the Women’s Court?

• Because the institutional legal system does not satisfy justice, either at the international nor national level; this is particularly true for the countries of former Yugoslavia, where political elites invest a huge effort to get around justice or sacrifice the interests of justice for political interests and maintenance of power;
• Because, through the Women’s Court, women become subjects of justice, encouraged to create different legal practices and influence the institutional legal system.
• Because Women’s Court is a space for women’s voices and women’s testimonies about the daily injustices suffered during the war and now, in peace; At Women’s Courts, women testify about the violence in the private and public spheres.
• Because Women’s Court encourages the strengthening of networks of mutual support and solidarity, and the creation of strong autonomous women’s movement.
• Because Women’s Court encourages the creation of different-feminist concepts of responsibility, care and security, in order to build a just peace.

We strengthen global feminist-pacifist alliances and coalitions: in order to bring punishment to violence and crimes, to influence the international institutions of justice, to start making documents and resolutions based on everyday experiences of injustice against women and all those with diminished social, economic, and political power.

see also: World Courts of Women