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1 J.L. & Fam. Stud. 109 (1999)
War and Disintegration of the Family

handle is hein.journals/jlfst1 and id is 115 raw text is: War and Disintegration of the Family PROFESSOR PETAR ARCEVI(t* I. INTRODUCTION Since World War II there have been some 150 large wars,' causing an estimated 20 million deaths. If smaller-scale conflicts are included, then the number of armed conflicts since 1945 increases to 400.2 As many may recall, the VIIth World Conference of the International Society of Family Law was indirectly affected by two of these conflicts. Held in Opatija, Croatia in May of 1991, the Conference took place in the wake of Desert Storm and, more important, one month before the armed conflict broke out in the former Yugoslavia. At that time, the only visible evidence of the oncoming aggression was several tanks of the Yugoslav army we passed during an excursion. Nobody, not even we who lived there, could imagine the terrible pain and destruction which was to follow when those tanks turned against the civilian population. This paper is an attempt to analyze the consequences of war on the family during and following the recent wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. While one reads primarily about death and destruction ranging in the billions of dollars, the immediate consequences of armed conflict on the family are frequently disregarded. Referring to the aggression against Croatia, some sources claim that the most severely afflicted segment of society was the family. There is practically no family which has not been involved in one way or another.3 In a large number of families one or more members are among the killed and missing, the wounded and permanently disabled. Particularly distressing is the large number of families who have lost their homes and been repeatedly subjected to trauma and stress, persecution and danger, losses and isolation, uprooting and violent change, all of which are bound to affect the stability of the family and contribute to its disintegration. As in other contemporary armed conflicts, the most innocent victims of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia- ' Professor Sarcevic is a distinguished European scholar, who has taught not only in Croatia, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Law and President of the University of Rijeca, but also at law schools in Switzerland and at the University of Florida in the United States. Professor Sarcevic is the current president of the International Society of Family Law, which has approximately 550 members in nearly 60 countries around the world. Professor Sarcevic was the former Ambassador of Croatia to the United States, where he played a significant role in the Dayton Accords. He is currently serving as the Ambassador of Croatia to Switzerland. ' UNICEF, Children in War 21 (1993). For this purpose, a war is a conflict with 1000 or more deaths annually. I1d. D. Kocijan-Hercigonja, D. Remeta and M. Rijavec, Mental problems in wounded children and their families 3 (1997) (unpublished manuscript).

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