User:Чиодица Перковић/sandbox 4

Women's peace activism in Serbia began immediately before the war in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and spread rapidly after the first shots fired in Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, and with the first calls for mobilization.

The mass mobilization affected national minorities in Vojvodina above all, so aside from Belgrade, the biggest protests against the war and mobilization took place here. Serbia, still an integral part of the SFRY in 1991, never declared the state of war, yet the then Federal Secretary of Defense, General Veljko Kadijević, signed an order according to which deserters were subject to treatment according to the laws of war, contrary to the constitutional position and role of Yugoslav People's Army (JNA).

The backbone of those anti-war protests, initiatives, support, and assistance to deserters and deserter rebellions in a war that had not been declared were women, both during the entire duration of Slobodan Milošević's regime and after its overthrow.

Those women were left-wing feminists, initially gathered in groups resulting from the first feminist conference in the SFRY "Comrade Woman" held at the Student Cultural Center (SKC) in Belgrade in 1978. The feminist group "Women and Society" was founded after this conference, and later the first SOS telephone line was established in Belgrade. These women's organizations were the foundation of peace activism in the dawn of the wars in SFRY.

Just before the outbreak of the war, feminists had formed ; Belgrade Women's Lobby, Women's Party and Women's Parliament. These organizations launched many peace initiatives like the first anti-war protest in Belgrade.

After the war conflicts, and with the overthrow of the Milošević regime, women's peace activism focused on war crimes; especially on the war crime of rape, the genocide in Srebrenica. They also critisized the newly elected goverment for not making a digression from nationalism and militarism, or carried out lustration in Serbia.

Women's peace activism also critisized the privatization process that took place after the war, the consequence of which was the increasingly difficult economic position of women, the loss of labor rights, and the general impoverishment of the population. At the same time, women's peace activism was directed towards reconciliation processes in the region, and towards international solidarity with peace movements and anti-war actions in the world.