Building Victim-Led Coalitions in the Pursuit of Accountability

Assurances ofvictim participation in proceedings before the International Criminal Court and Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia have been seen as a welcome corrective to the flawed model of earlier tribunals. The first such tribunal created since the postwar period, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was established by the UN Security Council in May 1993 without even consulting those who survived the atrocities that gave rise to its creation, the majority of which took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nor were victims formally incorporated into the ICTY\u27s work except for those who provided testimony and other evidence. (The same holds true for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the UN Security Council in 1994; in the interests of brevity, my remarks will focus on the ICTY.

Session Five: Expert Panel on Fighting Impunity Remarks of Professor Diane F. Orentlicher

As the field of transitional justice has matured, we have a better appreciation of the fact that both the capacity and will of societies to address violations of the past may evolve signifiicantly, and in unforeseen ways, over time—sometimes over a long, long period. (One speaker this morning described how he was unable to come to terms with his own torture for 11 years— and then, pursuing justice became critical.) Thus, for example, prosecutions for past violations may not occur in the immediate aftermath of a transition from repression to democratic gover¬ nance; often they take place after the passage of time, and the resulting breathing room for democratic consolidation, has made it easier to reckon with crimes of the past

Some Kind of Justice: The ICTY\u27s Impact in Bosnia and Serbia

A public presentation and book signing by DIane Orentlicher, an internationally renowned scholar on human rights law and war crimes tribunals

Remarks by Diane Orentilcher

Twenty years into the contemporary era of international criminal tribunals, a large measure of consensus has developed (at least among states that fund tribunals) has developed around the notion that these courts should dispense justice only in respect of the most serious international crimes. This view is reflected in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose preamble affirms that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished and whose admissibility provisions direct the Court to dismiss a case on the ground that it is not of sufficient gravity to justify further action by the Court. \u27 As developed in practice, the notion of gravity serves several important functions but cannot by itself effectively guide the selection of cases to be prosecuted by the ICC