ICTY Celebrities

• DOI: 10.1177/1057567718770707
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Author: Olivera Simic,Barbora Hola
• Subject Matter: Guest Editorial

Guest Editorial
International Criminal Justice Review
2018, Vol. 28(4) 285-290
ICTY Celebrities: War
ª 2018 Georgia State University
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DOI: 10.1177/1057567718770707
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Almost 25 years ago, the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed the Resolution 827
establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the first ad
hoc international criminal court set up by the UN since the post–World War II Nuremberg and
Tokyo tribunals. The Tribunal was created to prosecute persons responsible for war crimes, crimes
against humanity, and genocide committed at the territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991.
Over its life span, the Tribunal indicted 161 individuals for their involvement in atrocities com-
mitted during the wars of Yugoslav secession. It held trials against 113 individuals over the course
of 10.500 trial days hearing testimonies over 4,600 witnesses. Ninety defendants were convicted,
19 acquitted, 2 are currently being retried at the Mechanism for the International Criminal
Tribunals, and 2 died before they could hear their final judgment. All this judicial activity indis-
putably left behind a significant judicial and forensic legacy. The ICTY contributed to the revival
and consolidation of international criminal law and its doctrine and gathered a large repository of
documents and testimonies about the past.
On December 21, 2017, the ICTY held its final closing ceremony, which symbolically, and
maybe somehow counterintuitively, took place in the historical Hall of Knights in the Binnenhof
in The Hague, the Netherlands, the venue, which annually hosts the throne speech of the Dutch King
delivered for the official opening of Parliament. The closing celebration was attended by many high-
level states representatives, diplomats, top representatives of the UN, and other international orga-
nizations, who all gathered to applaud the ICTY’s achievements. Its successes were narrated as
much larger than its judicial and forensic legacy. The ICTY was celebrated as “a groundbreaking
moment,” not only dispensing accountability to those responsible but also contributing to “the
healing process” of victims, documenting “undeniable truth and facts of past tragedies” and leaving
records, which will “ensure that the world will not forget, that history cannot be re-written [and]
victims’ voices will continue to resound down the decades” (UN Secretary General, 2017). “The
ICTY is dead, long live the ICTY!” seems to have been the spirit of the day. The ICTY was hailed
and the legacy communicated in the official speeches was full of praise and pride. The final
festivities constituted the peak in a series of similarly constructed “legacy events” organized by the
ICTY and on its behalf for a long time. Already in 2010 during the peak of the court’s functioning,
but after its completion, strategy was demanded by the UN Security Council, Steinberg (2011),
following one of the first ICTY legacy conferences sponsored by the Tribunal, edited a large volume
entitled Assessing the Legacy of the ICTY. The volume featured many contributors involving the
ICTY officials and academic commentators from around the world and from the Balkans. The aim
back then was to “assess the legacy established to date by the ICTY, and more importantly, to
discuss ideas for what might be done during the Tribunal’s completion period to enhance or modify
the legacy” (Steinberg, 2011, p. 4). The institutional legacy crafting, however, peaked during 2016
and 2017. Over the course of these final 2 years, no less than 23 such events were organized by the
Tribunal and its supporters to engineer and market the Tribunal’s legacy to “ensure that its work and
achievements remain accessible and meaningful” (ICTY, 2018). Indeed, with its closing, not only

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International Criminal Justice Review 28(4)
the ICTY itself but also others have been already for some time debating its heritage and what is being
left behind by this pioneering institution of international criminal justice. The echoes outside of the
ICTY and outside of the legal capital of the world are, however, much more sober and reflective.
Countless articles and volumes of (critical) scholarship have been written about the work of the ICTY,
its establishment, rules of procedure, substantive laws it...