That Someone Guilty Be Punished - International Center for ...

Branko Todorović, who heads the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Republika
Srpska, believes that “the best thing the Tribunal in The Hague has done is not related to Bosnia
and Herzegovina only or to Kosovo or Rwanda. It has to do with the world as such and the
message is clear: ‘Think before you commit a crime. You could certainly be held responsible
for what you did.’” 174 Todorović is convinced that, despite the crimes that were not deterred,
if the ICTY had not been created “some very bad crimes would have been committed” in the
region. 175
Establishing that the ICTY has helped deter crimes that might have been committed but
for its prosecutions is of course inherently difficult, if not impossible. As noted, for that reason
we do not separately address how well the Tribunal has succeeded in deterring war crimes. Yet
in one respect the ICTY has made an unambiguously important contribution to the broader
framework of prevention: As we discuss at some length in Chapter VI, the Tribunal helped
launch a war crimes chamber within the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Through its work,
Bosnia has developed an increasingly effective capacity to prosecute war crimes itself. Reflecting
on this chamber as well as on war crimes prosecutions in Serbia and Croatia, Bosnian
lawyer Edina Rešidović observes: “And all of this for sure would not have happened without
the influence of the ICTY.” 176
C. Restoring and Maintaining Peace
The third and legally necessary justification cited by the Security Council for establishing the
ICTY was its conviction that the Tribunal’s establishment and the prosecution of those responsible
for atrocities then underway “would contribute to the restoration and maintenance of
peace.” 177 Historian Smail Čekić recalled that when the Tribunal was created, many Bosnians’
“expectation was … that the aggressor states … will stop or at least reduce their aggressionrelated
activities simply for the fact that they are now aware of such a UN-organized international
tribunal.” 178 But perhaps in part because Bosnia remained a cauldron of conflict for
another two and a half years after this resolution was adopted, few other Bosnians interviewed
for this study even recalled having set much store in the notion that the Tribunal would help
end the war.
Damir Arnaut, now a government official in the party of Haris Silajžić, recalled that
while the government of Bosnia “was very much in favor of the Tribunal,” its establishment
“was not on the top of [its] agenda” in 1993. Its top priority instead was “lifting the siege of
Sarajevo.” Some were concerned, in fact, that establishing the Tribunal “was a way to skirt the
issue” of ending the siege. 179 Looking back on what transpired in the years after the ICTY was
established, Emir Suljagić says that one of the lessons to be learned from the ICTY experience
is “let us finish our wars…. Do not start wars and pretend that a tribunal can actually do what
a just end to war would actually do.” Suljagić went on to say he believes that “tribunals are
38 VICTIMS’ JUSTICE