History in the Making: The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

This chapter outlines the nature of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the international response to ethnic and political conflicts. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia between Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) was an international war between the former republics of Yugoslavia. The chapter analyzes the debate over the creation of the tribunals. The government argued that the Tribunal&s;s jurisdiction should have covered crimes committed since 1990 and that the jurisdiction should be limited to July rather than December 1994. Many of those accused in this conflict had already been accused of committing crimes during the conflict in BiH. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced in June 2000 that it would also begin investigating alleged Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) atrocities against Serbs. The chapter concludes by examining the structure of the tribunals and their initial problems in organizing the rules of procedure.