The book Resisting Inter-Ethnic Violence. Community Approaches to Conflict Transformation in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina by Valentina Otmačić (Routledge, 2025)  presents multiple strategies employed by communities in their constructive resistance to interethnic violence and in their alternative approaches to conflict transformation. While most scholarship concerning the 1990s in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina focuses on multiple facets of wartime violence, this book addresses precisely that previously unexplored area — understanding collective resistance to interethnic violence through an analysis of the cases of Gorski Kotar in Croatia and Tuzla in Bosnia and Herzegovina, two larger multiethnic local communities that systematically resisted violence during the wars of the 1990s and succeeded in preserving local peace. In a world where armed conflicts are becoming increasingly frequent and deadly, and where ethnic or national identities are often used as instruments for mobilizing for violence, the experiences of communities such as Gorski Kotar and Tuzla provide exceptionally important lessons on the prevention of mass violence that may prove valuable to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike. Because, as these experiences demonstrate, violence always has an alternative.

Dr. Valentina Otmačić is engaged in scientific, pedagogical, and practical work in the fields of peace, conflict transformation, and human rights. She is employed at the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Rijeka, where she serves as Deputy Director.

Participants:

Valentina Otmačić, University of Rijeka

Sonja Stojanović Gajić, Center for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe (CAS SEE), University of Rijeka

Ivan Ejub Kostić, IFDT

Sofija Todorović, Youth Initiative for Human Rights

Moderatorka: Marija Mandić, IFDT