Thirty years after the war, young people in the various regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina learn different or fragmented versions of the suffering and crimes committed during the conflict of the early 1990s.
Until 2018, the country had an effective embargo on teaching about the war, which caused the deaths of 100,000 people and displaced more than half of the population of the former Yugoslav republic.
Since then, the three main communities—Serbs, Bosniak Muslims, and Croats—have each adopted their own history curriculum, presenting responsibilities, victims, and war crimes in divergent ways.
A striking example of this fragmentation is found in the so-called “two schools under one roof” system, where students from different ethnic groups not only follow separate curricula but are also physically separated. One such school is in Busovača, in the heart of central Bosnia, where 240 students—Bosniaks and Croats—study at different times of the day.
Reflecting how recent historical narratives remain deeply shaped by national affiliations, there is not even a shared agreement on the official start date of the war—each of the three communities identifies a different day as the beginning of the conflict.
In the third-year middle school history textbook written by Dragiša Vasić, a history professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Banja Luka, Radovan Karadžić, president of Republika Srpska and a war criminal sentenced to life imprisonment, is described solely as a poet, psychiatrist, and politician. The reason for his life sentence by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague is entirely omitted.
Similarly, Ratko Mladić, former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, is portrayed as a prominent general in the defense of Serbs in Croatia and as a key figure in establishing the Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His extradition to The Hague is mentioned, but with no reference to the crimes for which he was tried.
Professor Vasić’s textbook makes no mention of the Srebrenica genocide, nor of the victims and suffering of other peoples—the only pain told is that of the Serbs. In early January this year, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina annulled part of Republika Srpska’s school curriculum concerning the chapter “Theme 11. Republika Srpska and the Defensive-Patriotic War,” found in official textbooks.
Meanwhile, after carefully analyzing history textbooks, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) compiled, between April 2021 and March 2023, a database of facts judicially confirmed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Based on this material, Professor Melisa Forić-Plasto, a history lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Sarajevo, developed educational content for formal teaching in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We spoke with Professor Forić-Plasto about her working method and the challenges she encountered during the project.
Your research focuses on the role of history over the past thirty years and, in particular, how the wars of the 1990s are represented in school textbooks. What is the dominant approach in the curricula and textbooks used in the Federation and Republika Srpska?
I’ve conducted numerous analyses on this topic and observed how our school curricula and history textbooks remain overly simplistic and one-sided, heavily centered on their own national perspective. Especially when recounting the wars of the 1990s, victims from other ethnic groups are often ignored, as are entire chapters on war crimes and painful events not involving one’s own people. What emerges is a mono-perspective interpretation, where the focus is exclusively on the suffering of one’s own group, with a strong emphasis on victimhood, which in turn reinforces national cohesion narratives.
Does this approach also apply to textbooks for Bosniak students in the Federation?
Yes, absolutely. For example, in the appendix of the third-year middle school history book written by Almir Bećirović and Nazim Ibrahimović, in use since 2022 in the Tuzla Canton, only the perspective of Bosniak Muslim victims is presented. And this is not an isolated case. Generally, in textbooks used in the Federation for Bosniak students, the narrative almost exclusively focuses on their own people’s victimhood, while the suffering of other groups is practically absent.
When developing materials for teachers, did you follow a specific approach?
During my work, I had the opportunity to deepen my understanding of teaching methodologies for history education, thanks in part to the Euroclio network and various international organizations. In a post-conflict society like ours, it’s crucial to call things by their names and to address topics of recent history from a multiperspective viewpoint. This method allows for examining facts from different, even opposing, angles and considers the complexity of collective experience.
This principle was the basis of my collaboration with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), using a database of judicially confirmed facts on war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, built from ICTY rulings.
The idea was to start from a solid, verifiable foundation—accessible to researchers, journalists, and teachers alike. Every fact reported in the database can be checked and documented.
How can this database be useful for teachers and students?
We know how often facts are distorted, omitted, or completely avoided. This meticulously developed database allows for the precise verification of every single event. From there, we built educational material designed as a teaching aid for history teachers. Since 2018, when the topic of the 1990s wars was reintroduced into the three national curricula, various surveys have revealed the need for more resources. Teachers don’t just need training—they need reliable, ready-to-use classroom materials.
This led to the creation of a teaching manual based on original content from the database, ranging from simple documented facts—date, place, number of victims—to mini-documentaries and testimonies from survivors who recount firsthand the brutality and consequences of war. This approach allows students to truly connect with the events, as the victims are no longer presented as anonymous numbers, but as people with names, faces, and stories. It’s also a way to present crimes committed by all sides in the conflict, but always based on judicially confirmed verdicts.
In 2023, this material was offered to all education ministries in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Only the ministries of Sarajevo Canton and Tuzla Canton officially adopted it as an additional resource for history teaching. The Ministry of Education of Republika Srpska, however, never responded. In light of this silence, do you consider your work futile?
Absolutely not. Bosnia and Herzegovina has thirteen ministries of education, each with autonomous powers. Coordinating all of them is extremely difficult, especially since decisions are often strongly influenced by the political orientations of ruling parties. Seeking total consensus is probably too ambitious. But every material available online is still accessible to any teacher who wants to use it, regardless of ministry decisions. I know of many teachers who, even without participating in training courses, have adopted some of the resources—for example, the short stories about the 44-month siege of Sarajevo. Some have even contacted me from abroad.
And how did teachers respond during the training workshops you held?
During the workshops, we presented the database and some of the manual’s proposed activities, simulating actual lessons on specific topics. One of the most positive reactions was the relief at having a structured resource, with clear objectives and detailed operational guidance. Many teachers appreciated not having to face the emotional burden of selecting content—often tied to personal or collective trauma—on their own, but instead having ready-to-use tools adaptable to classroom needs and student age.