The Official Commemoration of the War Year 1991 in Croatia: Analysis and Recommendations

The document titled „Official Commemoration of the War Year 1991 in Croatia: Analysis and Recommendations“ provides an in-depth analysis of how Croatia officially commemorated the events of 1991, marking 30 years since the war began. Despite the fact it is almost three decades since the end of the conflict, the war remains a central element of the Republic of Croatia’s identity. The authorities place a significant emphasis on commemorating the start of the war, especially focusing on 1991.

The study offers a detailed overview of various anniversaries and commemorations, reflecting the state of official memory politics as of 2021. While recognising certain positive developments, the study also highlights the stagnation and regression in addressing problematic aspects rooted in the ethno-nationalist ideas of the 1990s. At the end of the document, recommendations are made for future commemorations of the events of 1991.

The analysis was prepared as part of a Memory Activism Programme by the Humanitarian Law Center. The goal of the programme is to promote a critical culture of memory regarding the wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia. The author, Sven Milekić, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Democracy Studies at Central European University, conducted this research as part of a six-month fellowship. While holding the fellowship, he gathered and analysed data on the commemorations of events from 1991, and wrote three short pieces on the subject: Croatian 2021 Wartime Commemorations: Re-Framing Serbs for Political Purpose, From Defiance and Extremism to Limited Concessions: Croatian Operation Storm Celebrations in the EU Context; and Institutionalised Forgetting: What Croatian Youth Know About the Wars of the 1990s (in Croatian). In addition, in September 2023, Milekić organised a roundtable discussion titled “War and Peace of the 1990s: Education, Memory, and Youth in Croatia”.