We are silent because we think it doesn’t concern us. We are silent because we are afraid of losing our job, reputation, or peace in the neighborhood. We are silent because we fear those who hold power. We are silent because we’ve been taught “not to meddle.” We are silent because it’s easier to believe “they brought it upon themselves.” We are silent because we are tired of injustices that are never corrected. We are silent because we believe someone else will speak instead of us. We are silent because generations before us taught that it is shameful to talk about violence. We are silent because institutions return silence instead of protection. We are silent because the system has taught us that every truth comes with a price. We are silent because we’ve been convinced that silence is a form of decency, not complicity. We are silent because we are ashamed of others’ pain as if it were our own. We are silent because we’ve grown numb to suffering, because it has become normal. We are silent because we no longer know whom to trust. We are silent because we have forgotten that speech saves, both us and those we wish to protect.
The vow of silence surrounding gender-based violence, which overwhelmingly affects women and girls, still hangs over our society. Although every new report of abuse, prostitution, or femicide provokes a brief wave of outrage, most people remain silent out of fear, shame, or the deeply ingrained habit of “not touching what doesn’t concern us.” It is especially devastating when behind that silence stand the very institutions that should serve as refuge and protection. When the police, social work centers, and the judiciary hide behind procedures, shifting responsibility from one to another, they not only lose their purpose but become accomplices in a social sin.
The American philosopher Audre Lorde reminds us that our silence will not protect us. It becomes a means of preserving injustice, a way to normalize violence and to muffle pain. Violence against women and girls is not a private matter but a moral test of society, and it is a test we have failed for years because we allow the pain of others to remain unheard.
There comes a moment when no word can conceal the shame of the system. The news that among those suspected of human trafficking and sexual exploitation of two underage girls from the Tuzla Canton are four police officers, men whose duty was to protect children, exposes not only an individual crime but a moral collapse of institutions and a culture of silence that keeps violence alive. This case is not merely a criminal act; it is a mirror held up to our society, to a system that closes its eyes to violence, and to a community that stays quiet, believing it is not its concern.
When a police officer or a social worker justifies their inaction by citing “procedures” or “lack of jurisdiction,” they cease to be human and become part of the machinery of evil, as Hannah Arendt described in her writings on the banality of evil, the way horror becomes normalized when institutions stop thinking morally.
Violence Against Women Is Not an Anomaly
Feminist scholar and lawyer Catharine MacKinnon warned long ago that violence against women is not an anomaly but a structure, a way through which societies sustain inequality. In this case, that structure is plainly visible: the very institutions meant to protect women and children have become accomplices or silent witnesses. Through their silence and inaction, violence becomes a systemic norm.
This is not the first time institutions have failed, nor the first time those in positions of power have ignored their legal and moral obligations. Over the past decade, Bosnia and Herzegovina has recorded numerous similar cases, from the abuse of girls in children’s homes, to sexual harassment at universities, to abuses of authority within state institutions. The pattern is always the same: two or three days of outrage, media noise, a few protests, then relativization, silence and the victims are left alone with their pain and trauma.
We live in a continuum of sexual violence against women that stretches across generations, institutions, and borders. It has been documented for years by international organizations such as UN Women, Amnesty International, and the OSCE, as well as by local organizations that record, day after day, cases of abuse, femicide, trafficking, and increasingly sophisticated forms of digital violence. Violence is not an isolated incident, it is a structural pattern of power.
Behind every individual story lies the same logic: the social approval of male control over women’s bodies. It is the logic that justifies unequal pay, tolerates sexist jokes, doubts victims’ testimonies, and romanticizes violence through language and culture. As feminist sociologist Liz Kelly wrote, violence against women exists on a continuum, from street harassment to institutional exploitation. Every act of silenced violence enables the next, more brutal one. And these days, we are witnessing one of the most horrific forms: the organized prostitution and exploitation of unprotected girls.
Moral Responsibility: Between Pain and Possibility
The philosopher Simone de Beauvoir reminded us that “the evil that does not touch you does not mean it does not exist, it merely waits for your turn.” The essence of moral responsibility, therefore, is the ability to recognize injustice before it personally affects us. If we remain silent about the abuse of girls in Tuzla today, others will remain silent when violence reaches us tomorrow. A society accustomed to silence loses its capacity for empathy, and with it, its humanity.
Moral responsibility, both in feminist and religious thought, is not merely a matter of individual conscience but a shared ethical task. It obliges us to see the pain of others as part of our own moral landscape. As the German theologian Dorothee Sölle wrote, “Suffering is not a private drama but a call to action.” Every report of violence therefore demands our response, not because the law compels us to act, but because our humanity does.
Feminist theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza of Harvard reminds us that hope is not born of pious words but of the concrete practice of justice. That possibility still exists today in every school, social center, courtroom, church, or mosque where someone decides not to look away, but to speak out against violence toward women and girls.
Our moral renewal begins when we recognize pain as shared, not foreign. Only then do we open the space for transformation. Every word spoken against violence becomes an act of healing for the victims and for a society that has betrayed them.
If we truly want a society that does not reproduce violence, we must break the vow of silence, which means committing ourselves to concrete change by:
-introducing mandatory gender-sensitive education in the police, judiciary, schools, universities, and all state institutions;
-establishing independent oversight mechanisms for cases of human trafficking, prostitution, and other forms of gender-based violence;
-ensuring transparent procedures and the public disclosure of disciplinary actions;
-providing support to victims, not stigmatization;
-and promoting a public ethic of empathy, the capacity to be moved by others’ suffering rather than remain indifferent.
The case from Tuzla Canton is not merely the tragedy of two girls, it is a test of our collective conscience. If once again everything is covered up, if institutions fail to demonstrate both legal and moral responsibility, then we have all failed the test of humanity.
As Indian author Arundhati Roy wrote in The God of Small Things, “silence is the accomplice of tyranny.” Breaking that silence is not merely an act of courage, it is the beginning of the moral renewal of society. Our task is to speak on behalf of those who cannot, whose voices have been taken away. If we fail to do so, no budget, no institutional reform will matter. All will remain dead letters on paper, a normative illusion of justice.
