International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia

Birth and location

The international criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was created in virtue of resolution 827 of the Security Council of the United Nations. This resolution was adopted on the 25 th of May 1993, as a reaction to the threat to peace and international security that grave violations of the humanitarian laws in the territory of former Yugoslavia since 1991 represented. The ICTY is located in The Hague, Netherlands.

Jurisdictions

In accordance to this resolution, the tribunal has multiple objectives. The main goals are: to judge persons responsible of serious violations of the humanitarian laws, to justice the victims, to prevent new violations of the humanitarian laws, to hinder revisionism by seeking and imposing the judiciary truth, to help build back peace and reconciliation in former Yugoslavia.

Its jurisdictions read as follows:

• Temporal jurisdiction: Crimes committed since 1991.
• Territorial jurisdiction: Crimes committed in the territory of former Yugoslavia.
• Personal jurisdiction: The tribunal has jurisdiction over physical persons excluding moral persons.
• Competence: the ICTY has competence to judge four types of crimes, the serious violations of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws and customs of war, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Remarkable is the fact that the ICTY doesn't hold the monopole of prosecution and sentencing violations of the humanitarian laws committed in former Yugoslavia, it shares this competence with national jurisdictions. Though the ICTY has priority on these latter and can, in the interest of justice, ask a national jurisdiction to desist at any step of the procedure.