THE SECOND DECADE – Analysis of War Crimes Trials in the Period 2014-2024

Early July 2024 marked the passage of twenty years since the establishment of institutions specialized in prosecuting war crimes in Serbia. The second decade of war crimes prosecution was marked by the political relativization of responsibility—both political and criminal—for crimes committed during the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. The dissolution of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) following the completion of its mandate, and the state’s shift in focus towards negotiations for European Union (EU) membership, have further pushed the issue of punishing human rights violations from the 1990s to the margins.
The optimism expressed in the Analysis of War Crimes Processing in Serbia from 2004 to 2013, regarding the improvement of institutional performance in this field through the development and consistent implementation of goals set forth in strategic documents, was betrayed. The adopted strategies for dealing with war crimes, both the National and the Prosecutorial ones, exposed the institutions’ lack of preparedness and weakness in taking steps that lead to more effective war crimes prosecution.