In the period from November 25 to December 10, 2023, the University of Banja Luka held a series of activities and thus marked the global global campaign “16 days of activism against gender-based violence”. Students and teaching staff organized a film screening, a discussion about femicide and four workshops.
The screening of the film “The Night of the 12th” with a discussion was held on December 5 in the reading room of the Faculty of Philosophy, UNBL. The activity was led by Nemanja Tubonjić, MA in philosophy. The workshop “Gender violence / domestic violence / sexual violence against women” was held at the Faculty of Security Sciences UNBL, and was led by: prof. Žana Vrućinić, assistant professor Dragana Vasiljević and Assoc. Predrag Popović.
The discussion “Mosaic Femicide” was held on December 7, Mile Šikman, professor at the Faculty of Security Sciences, Gorica Ivić, president of the “United Women” Foundation, Milkica Milojević, journalist, Biljana Radulović, judge of the District Court, and Miroslav Kotur, prosecutor of the District Public Prosecutor’s Office participated in this activity, and the discussion was moderated by prof. Ivana Zečević and Assoc. Nataša Vučenović Gnjato.
“The round table served as an interactive platform where the issue of violence against women was considered through a multidisciplinary framework, which combined theoretical considerations on femicide from a criminal-legal aspect, with numerous examples from practice, through which the application of the legal framework in specific cases of violence was illustrated , as well as institutional and non-institutional obstacles to the effective implementation of existing laws and measures,” she said for “Nezavisne novine”, Vučenović Gnjato, PhD. As she says, the participants looked at the issue of cultural patterns that favor the normalization of violence, as well as the problem of media reporting, and special emphasis was placed on the necessity of preventing violence through formal and informal education.
At the panel discussion “Positive examples of the response of local communities to gender-based violence”, on behalf of the city of Banjaluka, one of the panelists was Milada Šukalo, adviser to the mayor, who said that it is important for cities to be safe places for women and girls, and that in cities, individuals must move freely and feel protected. The message sent by all the participants of the panel is that violence can only be excluded if everyone acts together, and that this is precisely why the cooperation of institutions of different levels and the non-governmental sector is important.
The workshop “Patterns of blaming the victim of violence on social networks: a pragmatic-discursive approach” was realized by Assoc. Nataša Vučenović Gnjato from the Faculty of Philology UNBL. In the first part of the workshop, basic concepts from the domain of pragmatics and critical discourse analysis were presented, with reference to concrete examples of social conditioning of language practice, while the second part was devoted to the analysis of online comments on the news about partner violence. The analysis includes the classification of comments according to their pragmatic function, with a special emphasis on the statements through which the blaming of the victim and the justification of the perpetrator are disputed, which proved to be the most numerous.
The workshop ‘A Chink in Misogyny: Chipping away at the Walls of the Unhearing for the Unheard’ was held under the leadership of Tijana Popović, senior assistant and prof. Emir Muhić, PhD. During the first part of the workshop, part of the movie Hidden Figures was shown. In the second part, the focus is on the discussion of important and current topics in the field of raising awareness of polite, equal and constructively benevolent communication.
The Literary and Legal Club organized a multidisciplinary workshop entitled “How do we raise a man?”. The workshop participants approached the topic of violence against women from the perspective of science (legal history, criminal substantive and procedural law, criminology, sociology, psychology, victimology), religion and art (performative/film art and poetics). Prof. spoke about the phenomenon of violence against women, as well as the position of women in society. Dijana Zrnić, assistant professor, Mirjana Miškić, Assistant Professor, Milica Kostovski, assistant, Marko Romić, OJT Tanja Mrđa, and students Đurđina Talić and Anastasija Glušac. At the beginning of the workshop, the participants were shown the short documentary film “She”, which was acted, directed and produced by female students of the Faculty of Law and members of the KPK. Stefan Ivetić and Dajana Piljić took care of the successful running of the workshop.
