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One of the most important topics of Croatia accession to the EU was cooperation with International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in Den Haag. ICTY was created by the international community to prosecuted war crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990es. In Croatia, there was an opinion that the court will prosecute only Serbia and there was a shock when the first indictments were sent for war crimes committed by Croatian forces. A personification of this process was general Ante Gotovina, who was accused among others as a member of a joint criminal enterprise but, in the end, he was found not guilty. At the same time, some parts of Croatian society and media started to build a mythical status around Ante Gotovina. This paper will analyze this type of media coverage and how it did shape opinion and consequentially created a modern myth around Gotovina.

Background The relationship between military necessity and the protection of cultural heritage under international humanitarian law has been and continues to be governed by a constant tension that has shaped both doctrine and practice. While the principle of military necessity, rooted in and derived from the 1863 Lieber Code and codified in later instruments such as the 1907 Hague Conventions, remains one of the most fundamental principles permitting the adoption of measures necessary to achieve legitimate military objectives, it has also been used to justify the destruction of cultural property. Conversely, cultural heritage, deserving special protection under instruments such as the 1954 Hague Convention and its Protocols, represents the collective memory and identity of societies. Methods To evaluate the role of military necessity in the prosecution of crimes against cultural heritage, this paper uses a critical doctrinal and analytical approach, looking at both treaty law and international jurisprudence. It asks whether military necessity is a valid practical safeguard or a legal pretext for destruction. Results The paper contends that the incorporation of “imperative military necessity” has engendered critical legal loopholes resulting from warring parties’ exploitation of the prioritization of military interests over the preservation of cultural heritage, rendering cultural heritage vulnerable in armed conflicts. International tribunals, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), have endeavoured to restrict these justifications by criminalizing deliberate attacks and applying standards of necessity and proportionality. Conclusions The paper concludes that, despite treaties and jurisprudence limiting the scope of military necessity, the ongoing recognition of the necessity exception reveals structural weaknesses in international humanitarian law, thereby rendering cultural heritage vulnerable in armed conflict. Accordingly, it advocates for the strict limitation of the ‘imperative military necessity’ exception to provide better protection for cultural heritage during armed conflict.

The most relevant collection for studying the wars accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia, which resulted in over 130,000 dead or missing, is the archive of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. The Tribunal established by the UN Security Council in 1993 to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes indicted 161 people and had accumulated millions of pages of testimony, military and police reports, and videos when it closed in late 2017. This invaluable record details the massacres and includes well-known incidents, such as the mass executions after the fall of Srebrenica, but also killings and torture elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. This article investigates the history of this archive, analyzes its contents, and argues that the collection has two important features which present both a huge opportunity and a significant challenge for research—the immense volume of the archive, and a lack of access to important parts of it.

One of the most important topics of Croatia accession to the EU was cooperation with International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in Den Haag. ICTY was created by the international community to prosecuted war crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990es. In Croatia, there was an opinion that the court will prosecute only Serbia and there was a shock when the first indictments were sent for war crimes committed by Croatian forces. A personification of this process was general Ante Gotovina, who was accused among others as a member of a joint criminal enterprise but, in the end, he was found not guilty. At the same time, some parts of Croatian society and media started to build a mythical status around Ante Gotovina. This paper will analyze this type of media coverage and how it did shape opinion and consequentially created a modern myth around Gotovina.

Intersections exist regarding how institutions and individuals respond in the wake of mass violence, and we explore one theoretical perspective: resilience—the ability to overcome in the face of adversity. By controlling for the institutional context, we analyze the microlevel impact of testifying on witnesses who testify. New survey data provide information from 300 prosecution, defence, and Chambers witnesses who appeared at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. We test propositions about resilience related to trauma, motivations, contributions to justice, fair treatment, witness fatigue, and human security. Witnesses who experienced greater trauma, who were more highly motivated, who believed they contributed to justice, and who were satisfied with their current situation were more positive about testifying. Those who believed they were treated fairly by prosecution and defence were less negative. The findings add to the debate about the burden of bearing witness in post-conflict societies and why some overcome adverse experiences related to mass violence.

This Article explores the transitional, post-transitional and strategic narratives about the wars in the former Yugoslavia, more specifically in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The criminal justice narrative created by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) dominates the transitional narratives about the Yugoslav wars. It is not uncommon that both sides - the victims and the perpetrators - express dissatisfaction with the justice outcome depending on the verdict. Transitional narratives based on the criminal trials are expected to provide clarity on the distinction between \"bad\" and \"good\" guys; between perpetrators and victims; between the criminality of the perpetrating side and the response of the victim's side. With the passage of time, all transitional narratives will be challenged by post-transitional narratives, launched by various societal and political actors for different reasons with specific objectives behind them. For example, the ruling post-conflict elites can decide to create a post-transitional narrative in which they will try to re-interpret or counter the existing transitional narratives with the goal to exonerate the policies of the predecessor regime that led to the violence by reintroducing the \"politics of the past\" into the \"politics of the present\" in the perusal of the still to be achieved political objectives of the predecessor regime. Using the example of the ICTY genocide judgments, this Article will explore how its transitional narrative of genocide has been undermined by the post-transitional narratives launched by the Serbian post-conflict elites in the perusal of the unfulfilled strategic goals of the predecessor regimes.

West Germany’s record of dealing with National Socialism is often held up as a model to be emulated by states emerging out of war and mass crimes. This article traces the application of the German model to contemporary Serbia, as represented by the two tropes of “Nuremberg” (justice) and “Willy Brandt’s Kniefall” (apology). It argues that both events were divorced from their own historical circumstances and presented as contemporaneous elements of a model that set unrealistic normative benchmarks when applied to the Serbian national context. Placing Germany’s process of postwar memory construction in a historical and comparative light, rather than viewing it as an ideal-typical model to be emulated, provides a more productive way of analyzing the complexities of national memory processes in post-conflict states.

The war in the former Yugoslavia produced many highly trained and experienced combatants, some of whom engaged not only in a variety of organized criminal activities such as the illicit trade of natural resources, trafficking and corruption, but also war crimes. In the post-war environment various criminal groups took advantage of post-conflict transition conditions which enabled them to be transformed into legitimate legal entities. The failure to investigate and hold to account those involved in criminal activity meant that demobilized soldiers turned to highly profitable, legally constituted private military and security companies (PMSCs). This is coupled with poorly designed security sector reforms that often fail to enhance effective and accountable security that is respectful of human rights. In recent years, similar transformations of many former combatants and criminal groups into legitimate PMSCs around the globe have raised new concerns about their growing activities across different sectors. This article uses the former Yugoslavia as an example from which to highlight some of the increasingly common problems posed by the creation of private military and security providers globally, as a result of the current uncoordinated processes to prevent armed conflicts. The article reflects on the need to avoid smart sanctions and use other foreign policy tools, while calling for an integrated approach to security sector reform and transitional justice that is necessary for sustainable peace.

The experiences of many transitional justice mechanisms have led to a general consensus on the central importance of local legitimacy and local ownership; this indeed is repeatedly avowed by both the UN and the EU in their prescriptions on effective transitional justice mechanisms. Yet, I argue that the Kosovo Specialist Chambers was established in the absence of both. The court was not created in response to domestic pressure from within Kosovo; rather, it was the result of external pressure which by definition compromised local ownership and legitimacy. Drawing on the findings from first-hand qualitative research, I demonstrate that the court’s local legitimacy has not improved since its establishment. This lack of legitimacy, I argue, has potentially negative implications as, without popular legitimacy, the court’s proceedings and judgements are unlikely to command sufficient public support to either catalyse the societal changes promised by the court’s external sponsors, or withstand opposition to the court from within the Kosovo Albanian population resulting from any perceived slight against the ‘heroic’ KLA.

The international criminal courts and tribunals have heard thousands of witnesses in cases of extreme complexity and breadth. Their evidentiary record is overwhelming, with live witness testimony standing out as one of its defining features. Keeping in mind the arguments and policies of judicial efficiency and fairness, this article empirically examines the trends and patterns in viva voce witness numbers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), for Rwanda (ICTR), and the International Criminal Court (ICC). We observe clear differences between institutions and individual cases, and discuss the underlying reasons for such divergences. As well as providing a general overview, we demonstrate the complex interaction between case-related characteristics, institutional and situational contexts, and the number of witnesses called at trial.