No peace without justice
 Wanted: 25 war crimes suspects remain at liberty.
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After an inauspicious beginning, the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (the Tribunal) has come a long way. Increasingly, the institution is viewed both inside and outside the former Yugoslavia as critical to restoring stability to the region and rebuilding trust between communities. Moreover, as more and higher-profile individuals are tried, it is building up a body of case law, which will be key to the future laws of war.
Founded by UN Security Council resolution 827 of May 1993, the Tribunal is mandated to prosecute and try persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws or customs of war, genocide and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991. As of November 2000, 39 indictees were either on trial or awaiting trial, or had already been tried and found guilty. A further 25 war crimes suspects, including Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Slobodan Milosevic, remained at liberty.
In its early years, the Tribunal faced a series of seemingly insurmountable problems. These included limited funding, hostility of local authorities, a shortage of suspects in custody, and luke-warm support among key members of the international community. Indeed, a year after the end of the Bosnian War, Tribunal representatives were not invited to the December 1996 London meeting of the Peace Implementation Council, the inter-governmental authority that oversees the peace process. Despite lacking a formal invitation, then prosecutor, South African Richard Goldstone, decided to attend this meeting, at which the first 12 months of peace implementation were reviewed. Soon after, his perseverance and that of other Tribunal officials began to yield results.
The Tribunals fortunes changed on 10 July 1997, when during a daring operation, UK peacekeepers arrested one war crimes suspect, Milan Kovacevic, and killed another, Simo Drljaca. Kovacevic and, in particular, Drljaca, were both big fish and their removal broke the cycle of impunity which had characterised the wars of Yugoslav dissolution. The feared backlash failed to materialise and more arrests followed in due course. To date, peacekeepers in the Stabilisation Force have arrested 19 indictees; three more war crimes suspects were either killed resisting arrest or committed suicide rather than surrender.
Even before 10 July 1997, several indictees were already in custody in the Tribunal. These individuals had either been arrested abroad, had surrendered voluntarily or, in one instance in June 1997, had been arrested in the jurisdiction of the UN Transitional Administration of Eastern Slavonia in Croatia. The first war crimes trial was that of Dusko Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, who had been arrested in February 1994 in Munich, Germany. After a 79-day trial and appeal, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Eight indictees have died; two while in custody. Charges against 18 indictees, three of whom were in custody, have been dropped. Two indictees were acquitted after trial.
Many in the international community feared that the issue of war crimes and justice would complicate peace negotiations and come in the way of a lasting settlement. The Tribunal was established following publication of a 3,300 page report by a commission of five legal experts under Cherif Bassiouni, a law professor from Chicagos De Paul University, examining reports of ethnic cleansing. The commission was set up in the wake of the London Conference of August 1992, organised in response to media revelations of the existence of Serb-run detention camps. The work of the Bassiouni Commission was largely financed by donations from the Soros Foundation, the charitable trust set up by international financier and philanthropist, George Soros.
The Dutch government gave the Tribunal a headquarters in The Hague, which is no longer large enough to house todays staff of 1,200. The Tribunals budget, which has grown from $276,000 in 1993 to close to $100 million in 2000, is paid for by the United Nations. Some activities such as the exhumations programme for Srebrenica, scene of the largest, single massacre of the Bosnian War, and an outreach campaign, explaining the work of the Tribunal within the region are externally funded. In addition, in the wake of the Kosovo campaign, 11 countries sent forensic teams to assist the Tribunal in its investigations. |
