The events following the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine brought despair for thousands of elderly and disabled civilians who were unable to flee. Russia has been claiming strikes on cities all around the country, and the fighting has left countless civilians injured, helpless, and desperate in a war zone.
Only one gynecologist serves the 8,000 to 13,000 people of reproductive age who need those services in the municipality of Shuto Orizari in North Macedonia’s capital city, the only municipality with a Roma majority in the country. And as of last month, he’s no longer on duty.
Journalists and activists in Bosnia and Herzegovina are routinely harassed, threatened, and intimidated for their work with refugees and migrants entering the country via the Western Balkan route.
With this morning’s news that the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing at the UK’s Manchester Arena Monday night, the obviousness of the target begins to make a sick kind of sense.
In the languages of the former Yugoslavia “suza” means “tear.” And in the more than 20 years that have passed since the end of the wars that dismantled the country in the 1990s, it seems that there is one, very last tear that many mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters cannot shed until the mortal remains of their closest kin are found, identified, and properly buried.