In autumn 1992 – in the middle of the war in Bosnia – Monika Hauser reads about the innumerable number of raped women. She reads that Serbian soldiers turn hotels and factories into brothels where women are held captive for days or months. She is shocked about the events. At the same time she is outraged by the manner in which the media report about the women and thus abuse them a second time. The gynaecologist decides to get active on the ground. In winter, she travels to the war zone and decides to establish a women’s centre in Zenica, a town in central Bosnia.

Monika Hauser meets with the indifference of international aid organisations when presenting her idea to take care exclusively of girls and women raped in the war. So she allies with about 20 female Bosnian psychologists and doctors. Together they develop concepts to help war-traumatised women and their children even while the war is still going on. In Germany, Monika Hauser starts looking for donors – with good results. At the end of 1993, she is elected “Woman of the Year” by ARD-Tagesthemen, a news programme of one of the main German public TV stations. This generates donations amounting to about DM 750,000.

On 4 April 1993, Medica Zenica takes up its work with the inauguration of a project house which, parallel to a gynaecologist’s practice and an operating theatre, has also rooms for psychological counselling and accommodating women. At early stages, teams of psychologists and doctors go to neighbouring villages and refugee camps to inform Bosnian women about the support offered. However, at this stage it is impossible to openly mention rapes and torture to them. Therefore, the Medica team develops new methods to take a patient’s history, to enquire about diseases and symptoms in order to get in touch with women having experienced sexualised violence. The women’s centre in Zenica grows rapidly; a second house is soon opened, then, in August, a third in Visoko. In the first year, about 4,000 Bosnian women receive general medical, gynaecological and psychological care. And many more in the years that follow – often under extremely difficult conditions, such as the military blockade cutting almost all parts of Zenica off from the outside world in the mid-90ies.

In 1994, Monika Hauser, together with about staff members, sets up an office in Cologne. Soon after that, an argument about the name ensues with the Duesseldorf-based Medica trade fair. For this reason, the organisation has been called medica mondiale since 1995.

In the years that follow, the small team keeps supporting the Bosnian women’s centre using donated funds and providing expert advice. With time, however, the desire to support women’s projects also in other countries with wars and conflicts becomes more and more evident to the women in Cologne.

Step by step, Medica Zenica grows independent of the support from Germany and is officially recognised as a humanitarian organisation in Bosnia in 1996.

On the basis of the integrated approach developed in Bosnia – gynaecological care, psychosocial counselling and legal assistance – medica mondiale expands its commitment to include many other countries in the years that follow. medica mondiale supports traumatised women and girls in many countries around the world, e.g. with therapy centres in Afghanistan, Kosova, Albania and Liberia and working with partner organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Isreal – to name but a few examples.