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

Vehid Šehić, who believes the ICTY has “absolutely” achieved what he hoped it would within
the limits of its judicial role, 231 and Mirsad Tokača, who says he is “80 percent satisfied” with
what the ICTY has achieved. 232 At the other end are citizens like Fadil Budnjo, who says that so
many years after the ICTY was established, “very little is left of what we could have expected.” 233
Like others who described their disappointed hopes, however, Budnjo added: “All in all, we
still believe it was positive to have it established.” 234
In this chapter, we assess the extent to which Bosnians perceive the ICTY as having
achieved many of the goals identified in the previous chapter. We separately address (in Chapter
V) the degree to which the ICTY’s judgments have contributed to acknowledgement of
wrongdoing by members of each of Bosnia’s ethnic communities. We also separately address
the ICTY’s role in contributing to Bosnian capacity to prosecute war crimes. 235
To the extent possible, we have tried to link reported perceptions of ICTY successes,
partial successes, and failures to specific aspects of the Tribunal’s performance. In doing so,
we do not mean to imply that the ICTY was invariably at fault in the manner suggested by our
Bosnian interlocutors. In some instances, we describe widespread perceptions that the ICTY
has erred even when the source of concern may involve actions that lie beyond the control
of an international court or that are compelled by international standards of fair process. We
nonetheless believe that it is helpful for those involved in making policy determinations bearing
on international justice—whether prosecutors, judges, or the diplomatic community—to
understand how the actions of a tribunal like the ICTY are perceived by populations most
affected by its work. If nothing else, this may usefully shape public outreach efforts of international
courts.
A. Ethnic Fault Lines
As we have suggested elsewhere in this report, many Bosnians continue to embody the multiethnic
society for which Bosnia was known before the 1990s conflict, in which bonds of
affinity were neither determined by nor defined in terms of ethnicity. In our interviews in
Bosnia, particularly in Sarajevo, we would be hard-pressed to surmise many of our interlocutors’
ethnic identity from their observations about the ICTY. Thus any general claims about
different perceptions of the ICTY among Bosnia’s ethnic groups would be overgeneralizations
if not appropriately qualified.
Yet for many Bosnians, overall perceptions of the ICTY are at least in significant part
a function of the ethnic group to which they belong. 236 In a 2006 interview, Bosnian lawyer
Dubravka Piotrovski characterized the perceptions of the country’s three major ethnic groups
regarding the work of the ICTY this way: “It seems that Bosniaks are more or less satisfied,
Croats somewhat, and Serbs not at all.” 237 While others might characterize the degree of each
48 ACHIEVEMENTS, FAILURES, AND PERFORMANCE