Dealing with the Past: Peace and Justice in the Former Yugoslavia
| Published date | 01 October 2011 |
| Date | 01 October 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00080.x |
| Author | Richard Goldstone |
Dealing with the Past: Peace and
Justice in the Former Yugoslavia
Justice Richard Goldstone
CEU Visiting Professor and Chief Prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunals for
the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda
It is now 15 years since the signing of the Dayton Agree-
ment. That agreement silenced the guns in the former
Yugoslavia that had killed and injured tens of thousands
of people, many of them innocent children, women and
men. This is a good time for people in this region to
take stock of the lessons learned during these 15 years.
By any system of accounting, the result of Dayton
is anything but ideal. And a permanent solution to
the major problems remains unresolved. Bosnia and
Herzegovina continues to grapple with the difficult and
delicate differences caused by religion and nationalism. I
need hardly add that the situation is not a stable
one and as long as that continues, permanent peaceful
solutions in the whole region are retarded.
Many in Republika Srpska wish to secede and either
become independent or join Serbia. The independence
declared by Kosovo and recognized now by over 70 gov-
ernments has unsurprisingly helped fuel these claims of
the Bosnian Serbs. At the same time, a hopeful develop-
ment is that whatever the claims and counterclaims,
none of the parties appear to suggest that resorting to
armed force is the way forward in trying to resolve those
conflicts. It is clearly imperative that Europe together
with the whole international community should assist in
finding peaceful solutions to the reasonable demands of
the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. My own experi-
ence teaches me, however, that those solutions have to
be found by the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina
themselves. They cannot be imposed from abroad.
Croatia and Serbia, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, clearly
wish to join the European Union and that is where they
belong. They are working towards meeting the minimum
conditions laid down for that to happen and especially
upholding the rule of law and democracy. There are
many benefits that would flow from such accession –
both economic and cultural.
There has been both praise and criticism for the work
of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY), or as it is often called, ‘The Hague
Tribunal’. That there have been both successes and fail-
ures cannot be doubted but that is not a debate that I
wish to enter in any detail in this commentary. I will
make just four comments.
The first is that when the ICTY began its work back in
1994, there were allegations that the Tribunal, and in
particular the Office of the Prosecutor, was biased. In the
early months of the life of the Tribunal, we issued indict-
ments against Serb defendants and were accused of
being anti-Serb. Then, when we turned attention to
Croatian defendants, the allegation was that we were
anti-Croat. And later, for similar reasons we were accused
of being anti-Bosniak.
On other occasions I have explained that it is just
about impossible to have an international professional
office in which there are such unprofessional and inap-
propriate biases. During my term of office, at the very
beginning of the ICTY, we brought together a staff of
some 200 people in the Office of the Prosecutor. They
came from five continents – from many countries in
Europe, from China, Russia, Australia, India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh. They came from Kenya, Uganda and South
Africa, and from the United States and Canada. Many
were nominated by their governments.
In an office such as that of the Prosecutor, the policies
that are applied with regard to investigations and the
issue of indictments are necessarily known by all mem-
bers of the professional staff. An inappropriate and unpro-
fessional bias on the part of the leaders of the office
would very quickly become obvious to the staff. It would
not remain secret for 24 hours. It would be regarded as
unacceptable by the majority of the senior members of
the office and they would not and should not have been
expected to remain silent. They would have sent com-
plaints to their governments. They would have resigned
rather than work in such an office and that would have
been appropriate. This is a guarantee that members of
the international community do not sufficiently appreci-
ate. It applies today not only to the ad hoc tribunals for
the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It applies no less to
the International Criminal Court.
The second comment is that it cannot be denied that
without the indictment issued against Radovan Karadzic
Global Policy Volume 2 . Issue 3 . October 2011
Global Policy (2011) 2:3 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00080.x ª2011 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Practitioner Commentary
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