Pursuit of justice and the victims of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina: An exploratory study

Sanja Kutnjak Ivković*, John Hagan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a 2007 survey of victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our results show that the ICTY is the primary decision-maker for war crimes and crimes against humanity of their choice, particularly for the trials of military and political leaders. The respondents who reported being raped, beaten, and starved were more supportive of the ICTY than the other respondents were. The respondents who evaluated the ICTY as fair and who testified at the Court of BiH were more likely to select the ICTY as the preferred decision-maker. The respondents evaluated only one domestic court—the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Court of BiH)—as fair.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1-27
Number of pages27
JournalCrime, Law and Social Change
Volume65
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1 2016

Funding

Our respondents’ skepticism toward Serbian courts is also supported by NGO reports. For one, the sheer number of trials held has been small; by 2003 (8 years after the war officially had ended in BiH), only four war crime trials were conducted by local courts in Serbia ([]: 166). According to the 2003 OSCE Mission to Serbia study of Serbian local courts, the small number of trials seems to be a consequence of several factors, including the lack of political will to carry out the trials, the fact that “the courts in Serbia did not have the capacity to carry out the larger number of potential war crime trials,” and the fact that “Serbia [could not] guarantee that these trials would be conducted consistent with international standards for fair trials” ([]: 168). As a consequence, OSCE and the international community exerted substantial pressure, pushing Serbia to establish specialized courts to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity and to enact new laws addressing such trials. In the end, the District Court in Belgrade was given exclusive jurisdiction of war crime trials (Article 9, []). Like the Court of BiH, the War Crimes Chamber of the District Court of Belgrade relies on financial support from the international community, but, unlike the Court of BiH, it does not have international judges or staff members. The War Crimes Court has been carrying out war crime trials “despite limited funding, inadequate political support, and little public awareness of its work” ([]; see also e.g., []).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Pathology and Forensic Medicine
  • General Social Sciences
  • Law

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