The Legacy of the ICTY

by Igor Petrovich

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established on May 25, 1993 at the height of the Bosnian War. While the ICTY is scheduled to formally finish its work two years from now (on December 31, 2014), the vast majority of the work has already been completed with only the trials of Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić, and Goran Hadžić still left to conclude. Over the past 20 years, the ICTY has indicted 161 people. It is generally seen as one of the pioneering forces in international criminal law and can serve as a blueprint for the international community in order to prosecute future human rights violations.
 
Several years ago, one of the biggest criticisms of the ICTY was been the slow pace of proceedings. It will take twenty years for the Tribunal to conclude its work and it took over a decade for a number of convictions to occur. However, some of this criticism is no longer warranted now that Karadžić and Mladić have been arrested and are currently on trial in the Hague.