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INTERNATIONAL LAW AND JUSTICE | International Court of Justice

ICJ TRIES FIRST GENOCIDE CASE

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the U.N.’s principal judicial organ, commenced public hearings in a landmark case concerning allegations of state-sponsored genocide filed by Bosnia-Herzegovina against Serbia and Montenegro.

Bosnia-Herzegovina filed the case in March 1993, at the height of the Bosnian war of 1992-1995. Bosnia claimed that Serbia and Montenegro (then known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) violated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by systematically killing the non-Serbian citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In its case application, Bosnia stated that Serbia and Montenegro “has killed murdered, wounded, raped, robbed, tortured, kidnapped, illegally detained and exterminated the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.” The country requested that the Court direct Serbia and Montenegro to immediately cease its practice of ‘ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia. Bosnia also demanded the payment of reparations for the human and material losses incurred in the war.

In the following weeks, the Court issued an interim judgment ordering Serbia and Montenegro to take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of genocide in Bosnia. However, the court’s ruling was not heeded and the war raged on for another two and a half years.

For 13 years, the case has been delayed by counter claims from Serbia; one of the counter claims questioned the Court’s jurisdiction. However, the court ruled that it indeed had jurisdiction over the case in 1996. Another counter claim, which was later withdrawn in 2001, charged Bosnia with committing genocide against Serbs in Bosnia.

Bosnia’s lawyers will draw on evidence from the U.N. war crimes tribunal, also in The Hague, which ruled that the Serbian massacre of over 7,000 Muslims in eastern Bosnia was, in fact, genocide.

The Bosnian war, which ended with the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995, claimed over 200,000 lives.

The ICJ was established in 1946 to mediate disputes between member states of the U.N. This is the ICJ’s first case concerning genocide. The public hearings are scheduled to continue until May 9, 2006.

Updated March 2, 2006

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