The Current

Anna Maria Tremonti's most memorable interviews: The Bosnian women who bore children of war

As her time at The Current comes to a close, Anna Maria Tremonti looks back at some of the most memorable conversations from her 17 seasons as the show’s host.

In 2012, Tremonti visited the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina to meet women raising children conceived from rape

Anna Maria Tremonti says she 'could not let go of' the stories of atrocities committed against women during the Bosnian war. (Dado Ruvic/REUTERS)

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What lingers when a war is over?

When Anna Maria Tremonti returned to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 2012, she found out through poignant and painful conversations with two survivors of the Bosnian war.

When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia after the 1992 Bosnian independence referendum, Sarajevo was encircled by Bosnian Serb armed forces in a siege that would last four years. During this time, women were brutalized and raped by fighters in villages that were taken over.

Tremonti's conversations with two women in Sarajevo, who were raped and impregnated, are among the strongest in her memories of hosting The Current.

Their stories of raising children conceived because of the brutality of that war became the subject of the 2012 documentary Born of War. 

One of the women told Tremonti that she had been prepared to put the child up for adoption, but in the end she didn't, and is grateful for that decision.

"I really wanted to give her away or get rid of her. But then I realized that my pain would be even greater," she said.

Tremonti stands next to a sign warning of mines in the area on her way to the Bosnian town of Tuzla to interview a woman who was raped during the 1992-95 war. (CBC)

Tremonti calls the atrocities out of Sarajevo "the one story I could not let go of."

Click 'listen' near the top of this page to hear the 2012 documentary.


Produced by Lara O'Brien and edited by Joan Webber.