20/12/2023NEWS

16 DAYS OF ACTIVISM: UNIVERSITY OF ZENICA AGAINST VIOLENCE

On December 6, 2023, the student group staged a performance entitled “Stop femicide in BIH” and thus began a series of activities that marked the global campaign “16 days of activism against gender-based violence ” this year as well. The performance is available HERE.

With the performance “Let’s stop femicide in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, the students of the Faculty of Philosophy in Zenica clearly communicated that violence is not a “private matter”. Although it most often happens within the family, by husbands, violence is a problem for the whole society. The students invited citizens to raise awareness through open conversations, activism and reporting violence, but also institutions to act more efficiently. “It is very important to talk about violence against women in order to awaken the social environment, the patriarchal consciousness, to have as many reports as possible and in some way to act on the institutions that are obliged to protect the victims of violence, and not to protect the abusers – as we could see in the last few months that this is the case”, pointed out prof. Edisa Gazetić, PhD, associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zenica and also the coordinator of this activity.

In addition to the performance, the workshop “Everything you shouldn’t have asked about reproductive health” was held in the premises of the Faculty of Law of the University of Zenica. The workshop was led by Ajša Luković, an assistant at the Faculty of Law. Participants had the opportunity to ask any question related to this topic. In this way, they were educated about the very concept of reproductive health, the reproductive system, its functioning in all phases of life, as well as methods of regulating fertility and the right to access certain health care services, as well as numerous possibilities for preserving the quality of reproductive health of young people. In addition to the students of the University of Zenica, the students of the Medical School and the Second Gymnasium in Zenica also took part in this workshop.

Also, the Student Union of the University of Zenica held three workshops at the Faculty of Medicine, Economics and Polytechnic of the University of Zenica. The aim of these workshops was to animate the students for a dialogue about the problem of femicide. The participants actively participated in the discussions, pointing out that the signs of violence are often unrecognized by society and general practitioners. The responsibility of men to change their own attitudes and behavior is emphasized. It was particularly emphasized that it is a big task for doctors, psychologists and pedagogues in secondary schools to recognize the signs of violent behavior, especially among men, and actively work to solve this problem.