Živko Juzbašić was born in the village of Jošavci near Petrinja in 1924. In 1941, at the age of seventeen, he joined the Partisan and anti-fascist movement in the Banija region. As a member of the Seventh Banija Division he participated in the crucial battles on the Neretva and Sutjeska rivers.
In the course of his career he was assistant director of the Institute for the Workers’ Movement of Croatia (1962 — 1963), president of the Petrinja municipal assembly (1963 — 1967), deputy in the SFRJ (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) Federal Assembly, deputy in the parliament of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (1965 — 1969) and chief executive of the meat plant Gavrilović (1967 — 1973). He contributed greatly to the development of the Petrinja municipality and helped modernise and streamline the Gavrilović business. He resigned in 1973 after disagreeing with the agricultural policies of the time and then retired.
At the invitation of Franjo Tuđman, the first President of Croatia, he joined the Croatian Government of Democratic Unity as a non-partisan minister in 1991. He represented the government on a commission negotiating truce and prisoner exchanges. He was also a member of the Federal Commission for ceasefires and was part of the delegation that conducted negotiations in The Hague and of a working group drafting the Constitutional law on human rights and freedoms and the rights of ethnic and national minorities.
At the parliamentary elections in 1992, he was elected to the parliament’s House of Representatives on the Social Democratic Party (SDP) ticket and as a representative of the Serb national minority. He was one of the founders of the Croatian Helsinki Committee and of the political party Social Democratic Action of Croatia, whose president was Miko Tripalo.
In 2009 he published a book entitled Serb Issue and Croatian Politics which contains testimonies and documents about his turbulent life, social-political engagement, peace missions, position of Serbs in Croatia, human rights and anti-fascism.
Juzbašić was decorated with numerous awards and recognitions including the Partisan memorial award from 1941 and the Homeland War Memorial Award. He died in Zagreb in 2015.