Anti-Genderism on the rise in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Compared to Western European countries but also to some of the former Yugoslavian countries the emergence of anti-gender mobilizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been rather slow and recent. However, since 2019, when the LGBTIQ* movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) was able to successfully organize the first Pride march (Bh. Povorka ponosa) ever held in the country, anti-gender mobilizations have increasingly come to the fore in BiH too. This does not suggest that there have not been attacks on feminist and LGBTIQ* gatherings before or generally against the LGBTIQ* population. For instance, the Queer Festival Sarajevo organized in 2008 was brutally attacked by Wahhabi religious groups. However, since the Pride 2019 the discourse opposing gender equality and sexuality rights seems to have diversified ¬ now increasingly including anti-gender frames. This paper will analyse these newly emerging anti-gender mobilizations in BiH, of which we still know very little, and identify actors and discuss how they frame gender and sexuality in the context of debates around the Pride marches held since 2019. Its aim is to on the one hand identify specificities of the BiH’s case, particularly when it comes to how gender and sexuality issues continue to be instrumentalized for “ethnopolitics” (Mujkic 2008), namely the constant emphasizing of ethnic interests of the three “constituent peoples” ¬ Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs – and their political divisions. Furthermore, it seeks to discuss to what extent these actors and frames are linked to transnational anti-gender mobilizations.