The Forum for Transitional Justice is a Magazine dealing with the challenges, problems and aspects relevant to transitional justice in the post-conflict societies of the Western Balkans. We will be publishing pieces on national war crimes trials and trials before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as well as articles on truth-seeking and truth-telling mechanisms and initiatives, reparations and institutional reforms in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, but also on the experiences of other societies in overcoming the burden of past crimes.
We will stimulate a debate about the challenges and problems concerning transitional justice, including historical memory, denial of crimes, accountability and reconciliation. The Magazine will publish theoretical pieces and overviews of the literature referring to these issues. The articles will be published in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), but the articles written by authors from the region will also be published in English. In addition to the authored texts, which would be specially written to be published in this Magazine, we will also publish translations of relevant articles from other languages into BCS languages.
The aim of the Humanitarian Law Center is to further stimulate the already triggered regional debate on various aspects of transitional justice with the publication of this Magazine, and to open new questions relevant to the creation of the culture of responsibility, the formation of historical memory and respect for victims.
You may download the Forum for Transitional Justice at the following links:
Forum for Transitional Justice #1 (April 2007)
The first issue of the Forum for Transitional Justice gives an answer to the question as to what transitional justice is; it presents the mechanisms it uses and the challenges occurring in their application.
Forum for Transitional Justice #2 (March 2009)
The second issue of the Forum for Transitional Justice is devoted to the issue of reparations for victims of war crimes and other serious violations of human rights committed in the armed conflicts on the territory of the former SFRY in the 1990s.
Forum for Transitional Justice #3 (September 2009)
The third issue of the Forum for Transitional Justice deals with the question of the relation between the European Union and transitional justice – from retributive to restorative justice in the Western Balkans.
Forum for Transitional Justice #4 (January 2013)
The fourth issue of the Forum for Transitional Justice deals with reconciliation in the Western Balkans.
Forum for Transitional Justice #5 (December 2015)
The fifth issue of the Forum for Transitional Justice deals with the question of the role of education in the processes of dealing with the past and reconciliation, with a particular stress on the contents of history textbooks in post-conflict societies and democratisation processes.
The Decision of the ICTY Appeals Chamber, rendered on July 19th, 2011, affirming the conviction of the journalist Florence Hartmann for disclosing the contents of two confidential Decisions rendered by the Court, represents a negation of two transitional justice imperatives: to know the facts about the recent past and to prevent the recurrence of war crimes.