This book is a guide to the law that applies in the three international criminal tribunals, for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, set up by the UN during the period 1993 to 2002 to deal ...with atrocities and human rights abuses committed during conflict in those countries. Building on the work of an earlier generation of war crimes courts, these tribunals have developed a sophisticated body of law concerning the elements of the three international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes), and forms of participation in such crimes, as well as other general principles of international criminal law, procedural matters and sentencing. The legacy of the tribunals will be indispensable as international law moves into a more advanced stage, with the establishment of the International Criminal Court. Their judicial decisions are examined here, as well as the drafting history of their statutes and other contemporary sources.
There are many indications that various aspects and factors of large-scale war victimization could be made visible through the collection and analyses of data on organized crime in post-conflict ...societies. War victimisation could be understood as an outcome of opportunistic criminal activity: war conditions offer the unique opportunity to criminals and criminal groups (especially those involved in military or paramilitary formations) not only to restrain their destructive personal potentials but also to attain a new identity as ?national heroes? and gain a significantly better economic position as advantageous ?investments? to post-war criminal business. Crimes in war as well as war crimes, often perceived as basically launched by nationalistic (?blood and belonging?) ideology, could be examined from a broader hypothetical framework: nationalist ideologies should be considered not only as drives but also as means. By identifying themselves primarily as members of a specific nation who ?defend? (or victimize) a specific ethnic group, criminals of war provide not only the legitimization of crimes against other nations/ethnic groups but also of crimes against (primarily political) opponents within their ethnic group. The main aim of this paper is to argue for research on the continuity of organised criminal activities before, during and after ethnic conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia. This kind of research is argued to be a promising tool for the assessment of links between war and organized crime victimization as a way of getting a more comprehensive picture of the recent past. Research findings may further be used as the basis for creating comprehensive regional security strategies. Moreover, although the focus of this paper is on organised crime committed during the wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, its analyses and conclusions may be applicable to other similar contexts, including contemporary armed conflicts in different parts of the world.
While there is a significant body of literature on U.S. policy towards Bosnia in the early 1990s, the role and policy recommendations of American realists have been largely overlooked. Realism is a ...school of thought in international relations which holds that states are the key actors motivated by interests which seek to maximize their power and security in an anarchic world. Adherents of this worldview emphasize the pursuit of national interests and the importance of power and force in achieving it. Realists are generally opposed to military interventions where a vital national interest is not at stake. The purpose of this article is to fill this gap by analysing both realist policymakers and academics and how they responded to the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. Several top officials of the George H. W. Bush Administration including the President, Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft were realists and this worldview shaped the US response to the outbreak of the war in Bosnia. Focused on a host of other foreign policy issues at the time, the Bush Administration was adamant not to get involved militarily in Bosnia. James Baker’s statement „We don't have a dog in that fight“ came to define the Bush Administration's Bosnia policy. Its realist outlook combined with the presidential campaign priorities in 1992 to ensure that the Western response to the war in Bosnia was handed over to the Europeans. With realist policymakers in power from the outbreak of the war in spring 1992 through early 1993, many Bosnians hoping for a Western military intervention at the time would later come to realise how far-fetched those hopes were. In addition to realist policymakers, several prominent realists in the American academia also weighed in on how the US should respond to the war in this part of Southeast Europe in the early 1990s. Academic realists published their opinions and recommended policy options in leading media outlets throughout the three-and-a-half year war. Though their worldview was not shared by the first Bill Clinton Administration, academic realists continued offering policy recommendations on Bosnia. Academic realists like Robert Pape and Michael Desch opposed the use of air power in Bosnia arguing that it would be ineffective. John Mearsheimer together with Pape called for partition of Bosnia and establishment of homogeneous states in the Balkans and arming of Bosnian Muslims. Kissinger was opposed to a military commitment to Bosnia but did not lay out specific policy recommendations. In sum, both policymakers and academics argued that there was no vital US national interest at stake in Bosnia warranting deployment of ground troops. Even after the Dayton peace talks concluded in late 1995, American realists continued weighing in on Bosnia and offering generally bleak assessments. While the majority of those recommended policy options were not implemented, realists’ views on Bosnia in the 1990s still deserve scholarly attention. Studying American realists provides an overview of how both practitioners and intellectual adherents of a key theory in international relations perceived the war and its outcome. This analysis will also provide a more nuanced understanding of the variety of American responses to the war in Bosnia.
A strange thing about the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is that for most of its life, it has thought about its death. The Tribunal, of course, kept getting a ...reprieve. But today it seems more likely than not that the ICTY will indeed close down sometime in 2017, after the conclusion of the two cases it currently has at trial. Yet even after its closure, the ICTY will continue in a sort of un-death, through the unfortunately named Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, which will complete retrial and appellate proceedings in the cases currently tried before the ICTY.
This paper aims to determine the effects of the transition on mutual trade between the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The research will be based on a qualitative and descriptive analysis of ...representative databases of the six countries mentioned for the time period after the disintegration of the SFRY. Economic reforms and the trade liberalisation process started even within the SFRY, but the reforms did not yield the desired results. After the disintegration of the SFRY, all countries independently defined the transition process and chose the path of European integration. In the first phase of the transition, all countries experienced recession and hyperinflation and a high foreign trade deficit due to trade liberalisation. The second phase was characterised by regulatory reform and institution building, but this process did not proceed at the same speed in all countries. After 2000, Slovenia was the only one with a higher export level as a percentage of GDP compared to imports (68.2%), and the other countries lagged significantly behind. When Slovenia and Croatia became EU members, they increased their foreign trade exchange with the EU. Other countries of the former Yugoslavia developed their mutual trade, primarily due to the CEFTA Agreement. By signing the agreement, all countries achieved export growth as a percentage of GDP, and the highest values of this indicator were recorded in North Macedonia (49.6%) and Serbia (40.8%). Within the CEFTA group, Serbia is the largest exporter and importer by value (its most important partner is Bosnia and Herzegovina). If we consider all the countries of the former SFRY, the largest exporter and importer is Slovenia, and its largest foreign trade partner is Croatia.
ABSTRACT
This article approaches the idea of eternity ethnographically. Specifically it turns to post‐Yugoslav central Serbia and the version of eternity (večnost) evoked by practicing Orthodox ...Christians in their daily lives. In this context, the eternal does not imply the everlastingness of persons and things in this life, or an inevitable cyclical “return.” Rather, eternity constitutes a dimension outside of time that sits alongside the present, a dimension that can be inhabited by ancestors and departed kin. In evoking eternity, people throw temporal life into relief, find solace in the face of death, and engage in the national community those no longer physically present. Against an essentializing view of the eternal as repetition or stasis, the article speculates about how evoking eternity is socially and politically generative, imbuing life with increased imaginative possibilities.
АПСТРАКТ
Овај чланак приступа идеји вечности са етнографске тачке гледишта. To се осврће на верзију вечности (eternity) евоцирану од стране православних хришћанских верника у свакодневном животу, а на територији централне Србије, у пост‐југословенском периоду. У овом контексту, вечност се не односи на трајанје особа и ствари у овом животу, или на неизбежни циклични повратак. Вечност је пре димензија ван времена која постоји поред садашњости, димензија која може бити настањена прецима или почившим ближњима. Евоцирајући вечност, људи истичу привремени овоземаљски живот, налазећи утеху у суочавању са смрћу и тако повезују са заједницом оне који више нису физички присутни. Противно виђењу вечности – као нечему што је понављање или застој – овај чланак посматра социјални и политички потенцијал евоцирања вечности, као прожимање живота појачаним маштовитим могућностима.
APSTRAKT
Ovaj članak pristupa ideji večnosti sa etnografske tačke gledišta. To se osvrće na verziju večnosti (eternity) evociranu od strane pravoslavnih hrišćanskih vernika u svakodnevnom životu, a na teritoriji centralne Srbije, u post‐jugoslovenskom periodu. U ovom kontekstu, večnost se ne odnosi na trajanje osoba i stvari u ovom životu, ili na neizbežni ciklični povratak. Večnost je pre dimenzija van vremena koja postoji pored sadašnjosti, dimenzija koja može biti nastanjena precima ili počivšim bližnjima. Evocirajuci večnost, ljudi ističu privremeni ovozemaljski život, nalazeci utehu u suočavanju sa smrću i tako povezuju sa zajednicom one koji više nisu fizički prisutni. Protivno videnju večnosti ‐kao nečemu što je ponavljanje ili zastoj ‐ovaj članak posmatra socijalni i politički potencijal evociranja večnosti, kao prožimanje života pojačanim maštovitim mogučnostima.
The article argues for taking political economy seriously in the study of corporate accountability in transitional justice processes. Corporate actors are now commonly involved in transitional ...justice (that is, attempts at doing justice in the aftermath of mass violence). However, the literature is still limited by an inclination to treat political economy as context, rather than as a structuring factor intervening both on the war-related or authoritarian violence and on the efforts to make corporate actors accountable. This article proposes three shifts towards a better understanding of the political economy of corporate accountability in TJ: from a focus on the proximate economic causes of war to a genealogical view of pre-war, wartime and post-war economies; towards a more holistic view of conflict financing; and from an emphasis on the political economy of war to the political economy of violence. These shifts allow us to analyse a greater variety of political economies of corporate accountability, address more diffuse responsibilities for violence and injustice, and cover forms of violence that extend over longer periods of time. While holding broader relevance for the field, the arguments are illustrated with reference to the former Yugoslav region and the Bosnian War.
The fight against impunity for war crimes is one of the basic principles of international law. The criminal prosecution of the perpetrators of these crimes stems from international obligations that ...states have for the purpose of establishing facts and truth as the basis for establishing the rule of law. The right to the truth as a basic guarantee against repetition, the obligation to prosecute serious crimes under international law and the right to a fair trial, the right to effective legal remedies and reparations, and the obligation to remember and memorialize, are obligations prescribed to states by numerous international legal instruments. A fundamental contribution to the fight against impunity for crimes committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the armed conflicts of the nineties of the twentieth century was made by the International Ad Hoc Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. His legal legacy is significant both in the field of determining responsibility for crimes and in the development of international law. With the strategy for ending the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the obligation to process war crimes was placed under the jurisdiction of the national courts of the countries in the region. The judicial authorities in the region, with the support of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts, the successor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, took on the responsibility of prosecuting war crimes committed during the armed conflicts of the 1990s in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and for this purpose specialized departments were established courts and prosecutor's offices for processing war crimes. However, numerous suspects of high or middle military and civilian chain of command who participated in crimes, most of which were committed on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and for which their superiors were convicted before the Hague Tribunal, have not yet been prosecuted, that is, the sentences have been carried out. The national courts in the region, which have the obligation to ensure the implementation of the international principle of the fight against impunity and to continue the work of the international judiciary, have proven to be ineffective in that area, if not in the service of realpolitik. Numerous high-ranking war crime suspects avoid criminal responsibility by fleeing to neighboring countries where they have or have acquired dual citizenship. By abusing the institution of extradition, impunity has been granted to those suspected of serious violations of international law. In addition, by unfoundedly applying the institute of universal jurisdiction in the prosecution of war crimes, national courts not only ignore the jurisprudence of international courts, but also contribute to the revisionism of established facts. The lack of regional cooperation in the prosecution of war crimes, despite numerous agreements signed for this purpose, the non-recognition of judgments of the courts of neighboring states in the region, are problems that continue to prevent the acceptance of facts and truth as the basis of a guarantee of non-repetition. Moreover, the facts established in the judgments before the international judiciary are the subject of institutional denial and revisionism in the territories of the states of the former Yugoslavia that participated in armed conflicts in the 90s. Negationism and revisionism, deeply institutionally rooted in the post-war societies of the former Yugoslavia, their toleration and approval, as well as the ineffective work of the national judiciary, led to the phenomenon of glorification of crimes and war criminals in the region. Through the reports of relevant international and national institutions and examples from court practice, this work aims to point out the obligations and key shortcomings in the work of national courts in the region of the former Yugoslavia and the problems of regional cooperation in the prosecution of war crimes.
The fall of the United Nations 'safe area' of Srebrenica in July 1995 to Bosnian Serb and Serbian forces stands out as the international community's most egregious failure to intervene during the ...Bosnian war. It led to genocide, forced displacement and a legacy of loss. But wartime inaction has since spurred numerous postwar attempts to address the atrocities' effects on Bosnian society and its diaspora. Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide reveals how interactions between local, national and international interventions - from refugee return and resettlement to commemorations, war crimes trials, immigration proceedings and election reform - have led to subtle, positive effects of social repair, despite persistent attempts at denial. Using an interdisciplinary approach, diverse research methods, and more than a decade of fieldwork in five countries, Lara J. Nettelfield and Sarah E. Wagner trace the genocide's reverberations in Bosnia and abroad. The findings of this study have implications for research on post-conflict societies around the world.
Drawing on recent discussions in world literature and Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory, in the present article I explore Danilo Kiš and Dubravka Ugrešić within the formation of ...transactional exchanges between “small/minor” and world literatures. As I approach these exchanges, my focus is on texts and contexts in which translation and memory function as the key mediator. By reading Kiš and Ugrešić comparatively, my aim, in what I call “the minor drive,” is to address writers and translators that contest hegemonic narratives, and in doing so, examine the cultural enterprise of “small/minor” literatures from the perspective of “worlding” former Yugoslavia and Southeast Europe.
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