engleski

Expediency of statistics: War and Post-War Casualties in Croatia and Bosnia (1991-1999)

Violent conflict in former Yugoslavia triggered unvoluntary migration as well as ethnic cleansing in war effected areas. All types of movements of people were accompanied by various levels and intensity of war crimes and human rights abuse. Official state statistics did not follow these movements by reliable data. Therefore, concerned researchers and activists tried to grasp the picture by applying then available instruments of data collecting procedures to refugees (in Croatia). It became clear that those instruments were of rather limited use for the specific events of human rights abuse on territory and population concerned (Bosnia, Croatia). Shortcomings were both of substantive and procedural (specific programs) nature. With war activities ended, NGOs - working with women war victims - decided to start follow up study on militarization of the society and post-war violence against women. The focus was on incidences of beating, harassment, sexual abuse, and homicide of female population in the last decade as being informed about in newspapers. The goal of the study was to present statistics on violence against women to judiciary and parliament in order to get Criminal law reformed. Applied were the instruments available for the human rights abuse documentation (HURIDOCS): again, it became obvious that these instruments were of limited use for statistically informed legislature. Therefore NGOs decided to apply statistical packages available to refine data and make them readable to other NGOs and government. The paper argues that basic concepts of official statistics and instruments available for statistical elaboration of human rights abuse should he refined in order to get data more powerful in arguing the need for legislator's action.

nasilje; statistika; ljudska prava; nevladine organizacije; zakonodavac

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