Repairing the harm of victims after violent conflict
| Author | Stephan Parmentier,Mina Rauschenbach,Elmar Weitekamp |
| Date | 01 January 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758013511687 |
| Published date | 01 January 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Repairing the harm of
victims after violent conflict:
Empirical findings
from Serbia
Stephan Parmentier
University of Leuven, Belgium
Mina Rauschenbach
University of Leuven, Belgium
Elmar Weitekamp
University of Tu¨bingen, Germany
Abstract
Almost 20 years after the end of the armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the debates on how
to deal with the past in Serbia are still ongoing. From the very start the international community
has put major emphasis on the criminal prosecution and conviction of the persons mostly
responsible for the war crimes in the region, both by establishing the International Criminal Tri-
bunal for ex-Yugoslavia and encouraging national prosecutions. In the discussions about transi-
tional justice in the region, little if any attention has been paid to the victimisation of the
population in Serbia and repairing the harm incurred during and after the armed conflict. More-
over, the views and expectations of the local population have hardly been the object of any scien-
tific studies. The purpose of this article is to report about the opinions of the population in Serbia
in relation to reparation for victims, by drawing on the main findings of a quantitative survey con-
ducted in the country in 2007. It highlights the importance of paying attention to the population’s
needs and, in particular, material and non-material forms of reparation.
Keywords
Transitional justice, war crimes, reparation, Serbia, population-based research
Corresponding author:
Stephan Parmentier, Professor of Criminology and Human Rights, Leuven Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, KU
Leuven - University of Leuven, Hooverplein 10, 3000 Leuven, Belgium, and Secretary General of the International
Society for Criminology.
Email: Stephan.Parmentier@law.kuleuven.be
International Review of Victimology
2014, Vol 20(1) 85–99
ªThe Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758013511687
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