After the publication of her book, Svetlana Broz decided to take a definitive step towards the search for true reconciliation between the opposing ethnic groups within the former Yugoslavia.

In 2001, she founded the Non-Governmental Organisation Gariwo (Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide), which seeks to pay homage to what Svetlana calls “civil courage”, in other words, the courage of those individuals who oppose hate, humiliation, torture and murder of innocent people. 

In an effort to lend power to this individual effort and turn it into something collective, the NGO Gariwo, founded by Svetlana, provides civil education and creates spaces to bring about multiethnic reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina; beyond its borders, the first “Garden of the Righteous" has already been opened in Italy.

Broz, doctor and journalist, also travels around the world giving lectures on the concept of “civil courage” as a way of increasing humanitarian feeling in the world.

Between 2005 and 2008, she gave over 700 lectures at universities and international organisations, the central idea of which keeps the spirit of that initial idea that she had back 1992 working as a volunteer cardiologist: that the story of peace during conflicts must also be heard.

Svetlana’s achievement takes on a different dimension when one associates her surname with that of her grandfather, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, leader of the unified Yugoslavia, who defeated Hitler and challenged the supremacy of the former Soviet Union. A man of contradictions who some remember for his egalitarian politics and others for the iron fist with which he ruled as President for Life (1945-1980).

The pacifist granddaughter of Tito prefers not to talk about the rights and wrongs of his actions because she admits that she's "not objective", and because she wants to disassociate her parentage from the ideals that motivate her now.

One thing that is certain is that Marshal Tito achieved his dream of a unified, multiethnic nation…a dream that was shattered in pieces barely ten years after his death…perhaps Svetlana inherited from this dream the conviction that it is possible to coexist…after all, the blood of various ethnic groups runs in the veins of this family.

The war in the Balkans that took place between 1991 and 1999 is now seen as the worst conflict in Europe since the Second World War (1939-1945). The fighting resulted in something like 200,000 deaths and lead to the displacement of thousands of people to more secure areas.

After the death of Marshal Josip Broz, the rise to power of Slobodan Milosevic resulted in a series of internal splits and the beginning of a hate campaign against other ethnic groups, which escalated into what the international community admitted was “ethnic cleansing”, with serious and blatant violations of human rights and of international law.

In reality, although Milosevic didn’t rise to the presidency of the former Yugoslavia until 1997, the clashes had already started in the early 1990s, specifically, in 1991 with the bombing of Vukovar and Dubrovnik by Serbia. Up to that point, the international community had passed it off as an "internal conflict" and it wasn't until 1992 that the UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Serbia.

In 1993, actions committed against the Kosovan Albanian population in the “internal conflict” reached atrocious proportions. As the lawyer and author of Crimes Against Humanity, Geoffrey Robertson points out, were it not for the images that the press started broadcasting, the international community would have been much slower to react and intervene.

That same year saw the first threat of military intervention from NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) in a bid to “pacify the region”, and the UN Security Council took the decision to create the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.

In 1996, The Kosovo Liberation Army entered the scene. Their attacks were intended to draw attention to the ”internal conflict” and attract international help, although three more years would pass before, in 1999, NATO decided to deploy a thousand military aircraft and sixty thousand troops and launch a “humanitarian offensive” in the Balkans. The conflict thus took on an international character.

Both the NATO intervention and the proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal were plagued with problems from beginning to end. After an ill-conceived bombing campaign that had little tactical benefit, international forces became the object of fierce criticism and were accused of themselves violating international criminal law.

Meanwhile, the Tribunal, established in The Hague to prosecute war crimes committed during the break up of Yugoslavia, took two years to arrest its first suspect, who was far from being a “big fish” in the strategy of ethnic cleansing. The suspect was a low-ranking soldier, much removed from any intellectual responsibility for the crimes he was charged with. Nonetheless, his story offers a good illustration of what happened within the Serbian community.

Dusko Tadic was the owner of a café where people from all the different ethnic groups would meet, until 1990 when nationalist propaganda turned him into a fervent follower of the ideas of Slobodan Milosevic, which advocated Serbian superiority.

In Crimes Against Humanity, Geoffrey Robertson explains: “It is the tale of a café in Kozara which changed over eighteen months from a happy multiethnic meeting place to a den resounding to the racist obscenities”, fuelled by the political classes.
It took years for the majority of the true strategists behind the ethnic cleansing to be brought to justice. However, many of them never found themselves on the accused bench of the International Criminal Tribunal.

After the armistice signed in 1999, many of the true perpetrators of war crimes were a long way from being detained. In 2002, the International Crisis Group (ICG) confirmed that in Serbia, around twenty thousand people who devised and directed some of the worst massacres committed in the Balkans during the conflict, were still able to go about their lives unhindered.

Different sources estimate that the intervention of the NATO “peace keeping forces” caused the deaths of between 1,500 and 5,000 civilians in the region. Meanwhile, the chief strategist of the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, was brought before the International Tribunal only in 2001, and died five years later. He defended himself, pleaded innocent and was never officially declared guilty by the court.

On the 21st March, the UN observes the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. On the 24th March 1999, the “internal war” in the former Yugoslavia became an international conflict involving various national armed groups and more than 19 different countries. Slobodan Milosevic died peacefully at The Hague on 11th March 2006, victim of a heart attack.

It's now a decade since war broke out in what was once Yugoslavia, a country now fragmented that, before its break up, was composed of Serbs, Croats, Slavic Muslims, Slovenes, Albanians, Macedonians, Yugoslavs, Montenegrins, Hungarians, Kosovans, Turks, Romanians, Vlachs, Jews and Gypsies.

Many of these groups have formed separate nations, some with tacit recognition from the international community, which hopes finally to see peace in this part of southern Europe.

As the lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson says, speaking of Slobodan Milosevic: “the release of white doves over his grave provided a surreal, if unintended, promise that his burial might bring peace at last to the Balkans”.