Neither Here Nor There

Bosnia-Herzegovina FlagBosnian ElectionsAlthough elections after the war were held to select a three-member presidency(a representative of Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbians) and a national parliament, mostinternational observers claim there was widespread voter fraud and intimidation. Thepolitical system set-up after the Dayton Peace Accords was meant to be a short-term fix.Still, this flawed system exists today, well more than a decade later.International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP)ICMP was established to support the Dayton Peace Agreement. Its primary role is toensure the cooperation of governments in locating and identifying those who havedisappeared during armed conflict or as a result of human rights violations. SinceNovember 2001, ICMP has led the way in using DNA as a first step in the identification oflarge numbers of persons missing from war. ICMP has developed a database of relativesof missing people, and bone samples taken from human remains exhumed from massgraves in the countries of former Yugoslavia. By matching DNA from blood and bonesamples, ICMP has been able to identify more than 15,000 people who were missingfrom the Bosnian War. In addition to its work in the Balkans, ICMP is involved in helpinggovernments in various parts of the world to establish effective identification systems inthe wake of conflict or natural disaster.The International Criminal Tribunal for the former YugoslaviaThe United Nations Security council establishedThe International Criminal Tribunal for theformer Yugoslavia in 1993. Based in The Hague,the Netherlands, it has announced indictmentsof hundreds of individuals, including formerYugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic,excused of genocide and crimes againsthumanity during the war. In 2006, the formerSerb leader died of a heart attack in prisonbefore a verdict was reached in his five-yearlong trial. Today, many war criminals have notbeen brought to justice and are in hiding, andthere has been a lack of will by the internationalcommunity to push for their arrest.8