SPECIJALNA I GENERALNA PREVENCIJA SEKSUALNOG NASILJA NAD DJECOM U BOSNI I HERCEGOVINI
SPECIAL AND GENERAL PREVENTION OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Summary/Abstract: When we say violence against children, the European union legislation distinguishes between: abuse, bullying, youth violence (gang violence), intimate partner violence, domestic violence, sexual and emotional violence. Bosnia and Herzegovina has not defined most of these forms of violence against children as criminal offences nor has it adopted uniform penalties for the same criminal offences, which allows perpetrators of crimes to be punished more leniently. In a country where there is no uniform legal regulation regarding the prevention and suppression of sexual violence, and especially sexual violence against children, due to the different definitions not only of criminal offences but also of penalties for certain crimes in the entities and the Brčko District, the logical consequence is the lack of general prevention, because perpetrators of crimes will use this inconsistency of legislation to avoid criminal liability or be punished more leniently. Legislation does not allow the establishment of a unified policy regarding the prevention and suppression of sexual violence against children. Furthermore, the prescribed statute of limitations prevents these children, from the age of 14, from choosing to prosecute and take legal action against those responsible for the committed sexual violence when they reach 20 years or older, when they become psychologically and physically mature and financially capable. The absence of punishment or “mild criminal policy ”favors the recurrence and escalation of sexual violence against children, so that sexual violence goes beyond the scope of “conventional crime” and increasingly and in greater numbers becomes “trafficking in children for sexual exploitation”, whether it is sexual violence through digital technologies or the rape of children through abuse of official position or their incitement to prostitution and exploitation for the purpose of “child pornography”. Victimization by sexual violence is a public health and social problem with negative consequences for mental health, because the victims in most cases suffer from “rape syndrome”, but also from some sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV and for life.

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