BOSNIAK-AMERICAN WOMAN SANELA DIANA JENKINS DONATES $4 MILLION TO UCLA FOR ADVOCACY

THANK YOU SANELA JENKINS!

We hope Sanela's next donation will go towards the establishment of Srebrenica Genocide Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (that would be a dream come true for all of us!). The institution of this kind is needed to effectively combat widespread genocide denial, help prevent further genocides and commemorate 8,000 to 10,000 men, elderly, and children who perished during Srebrenica genocide, including more than 20,000 women forcefully deported from the enclave in a U.N.-assisted ethnic cleansing.

Beautiful Sanela Jenkins (aka: Sanela Catic)
with Mick Jagger. Photo courtesy of Nacional.

According to Associated Press that originally broke the story, a former Bosnian refugee has donated $4 million for the UCLA School of Law to create a clinic on international justice that will aim to help courts trying Balkan war criminals.

The endowment was made by Sanela Diana Jenkins (aka: Sanela Catic), an ethnic Bosniak woman who fled the war-torn capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993 and married a billionaire Roger Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays Bank. In the early 90s Sarajevo had endured the longest military siege in modern history with 10,000 - 15,000 residents killed, including at least 1,500 children.

When Sanela left Sarajevo and came to England, her parents stayed behind. In England, Sanela worked very hard to earn money and help her parents who suffered under the daily bombardment of Sarajevo. She met her husband Roger Jenkins at City University and soon, they fell in love. Together, they welcomed two children - a son Innis and a daughter Eneya. According to the UCLA, "Sanela Diana Jenkins has turned a life of hardship into triumph, as she has developed into a successful business woman, a devoted mother, and a philanthropist. As a native of Sarajevo, Bosnia, Jenkins lived her childhood and teenage years in the midst of genocide."

The Sanela Diana Jenkins Clinic on International Justice aims to provide research and expertise to war crimes courts and also works on war crimes and justice policy - initially focusing on Balkan issues. The clinic is part of the law school's International Human Rights Program. The work of the Jenkins Clinic focuses on three activities central to the advancement of human rights, including legal advocacy, political advocacy, and documentation.

According to the UCLA, students and faculty will work with lawyers at the War Crimes Section of the State Court of Bosnia and Hercegovina and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Advocacy before governments and international organizations will often be necessary to move legal processes forward, and Documentation will usually involve field work, collecting documentary and forensic evidence, and recording eyewitness accounts. In addition to written documentation, the Clinic will experiment with audio-visual media and seek to make documentation available on the internet.

"Additionally, Jenkins has dedicated a large part of her attention back to her native land by establishing the Irnis Catic Foundation in honor of her brother. The Foundation, which is closely associated with the funding of the medical school at the University of Sarajevo, aims to provide financial support toward establishing Bosnian schools and orphanages," notes the UCLA web site. It is also instrumental in building homes for the country’s poor, supplying emergency aid & relief and cleaning the country’s lakes and poluted areas. The Irnis Catic Foundation is the largest, privately funded Bosnian organization of its kind.

"The work she is going to do with this program ... will make a huge difference," Haris Silajdzic, president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, said in a statement from the University of California, Los Angeles.

VISIT » The Sanela Diana Jenkins Clinic on International Justice