Memory activism and the victimhood paradox in Bosnia and Herzegovina: commemorating the "War Child" in the resistance against ethnic nationalism

Noting the conceptual malleability and the historically opposed political uses of victimhood, this article analyses the strategies deployed to navigate the “victimhood paradox” in two cases of memory activism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It examines an annual grassroots commemoration in Prijedor for local children killed in the 1992–1995 war and the curatorial practice and educational work of the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo as a socially active cultural institution. It argues that the activists' focus on the symbol of the child as an “ideal” victim, combined with their adoption of different but complementary forms of public action across ethnic and generational boundaries, has shaped an inclusive counter-memory of the war and underpinned resistance against dominant ethnonationalist narratives in the country.