Gow, James; Kerr, Rachel and Paji, Zoran (eds). Prosecuting War Crimes: Lessons and Legacies of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 589 on a non-ethnic vision of Kosovo citizenship, using contention over the issue of war benefits — including the exclusion of Kosovo Albanians who fought with other non-KLA groups — as a way to institutionalize their version of Kosovo identity. Finally, Lenard Cohen wraps up the volume with a survey of the transformation of values among the populations of the ex-Yugoslav space, concluding with a modestly and carefully hopeful view on the shifts in attitudes and values in the region. Overall, Transcending Fratricide takes a creative and locally-grounded approach to the question of this region’s future. Department of Politics Chip Gagnon Ithaca College Gow, James; Kerr, Rachel and Pajić, Zoran (eds). Prosecuting War Crimes: Lessons and Legacies of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Contemporary Security Studies. Routledge, London and New York, 2014. xviii + 241 pp. Notes. Index. £80.00. The decision to prosecute individuals for violations of the laws of armed conflict at Nuremberg and Tokyo in 1945 represented a watershed event in world politics. Despite the unparalleled destruction associated with the Second World War, the trials authorized by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) provided a glimmer of hope that the adjudication of war criminals in the post-1945 era would serve to reduce both the frequency and destructiveness of armed conflict. Due to Cold War priorities, however, the fair and judicious application of laws drafted at The Hague (1899, 1907) and Geneva (1949) was relegated to second-tier status in the strategic behaviour of major states. It was not until 1993, nearly five decades after Nuremberg and Tokyo, that the international community systematically attempted to prosecute individuals for their wartime behaviour. In response to the bloody wars of the former Yugoslavia, the United Nations Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY). In an effort to comprehensively analyse and assess the Yugoslav tribunal twenty years after its creation, Gow et al. have assembled twelve chapters that address issues of paramount importance to a full understanding of the work of the tribunal. Drafted as the tribunal enters its final stage, Prosecuting War Crimes is principally concerned with the legacy of the ICTY. Doing so requires an indepth consideration of the evolution of the Court, a process driven by both internal dynamics and changing global conditions, which the authors deftly and thoroughly address. Chapters consider, among others, the SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 590 difficult process of transforming customary international law into applicable international criminal law, maintaining a judicial process that appeared fair and impartial, the learning curve of the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), the Chief Prosecutor’s relationship with the Appeals Chamber and the varying degrees of support of and resistance to the tribunal in the Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian communities. Prosecuting War Crimes not only fills a number of gaps in the existing academic literature on the Yugoslav tribunal, in particular, and international criminal law, in general, its quality and cohesiveness raise the standard of excellence that future research will be hard-pressed to reach. An unmistakable factor in the success of this collection of essays is the connection between the majority of authors and the War Crimes Research Group at King’s College London, a scholarly undertaking co-directed by two of the volume’s three editors. Further, all three editors brought to the volume professional experience in the Office of the Prosecutor. Rather than providing a sterile and largely theoretical assessment of the ICTY, the contributors to Prosecuting War Crimes offer insights made possible by professional connections and experiences with the tribunal. A genuine contribution of this edited volume is its effort to broaden consideration of the topic beyond the indictment, apprehension, prosecution and sentencing of alleged war criminals. Prosecuting War Crimes adopts a more comprehensive, and highly useful, approach of placing the ICTY in the context of restorative justice. In so doing, its authors address the fundamentally importantquestionofwhetherthetribunal’scriminaljusticesystemadequately met the needs of crime victims. While insightfully addressed throughout the volume, the concluding chapter takes on the restorative justice question by outlining ways in which the tribunal neglected the needs of victims. Coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of the Yugoslav tribunal’s establishment, this volume suffers...