Seeking Justice or Serving Politics: the Effectiveness of the ICTY in Responding to Genocide

This Thesis examines the effectiveness of International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in prosecuting the crime of genocide and achieving justice for the victims. Hypothesis is that the ICTY faced challenges that affected its effectiveness, for instance the lengths and complexity of the trials, difficulty in gathering evidence and non-compliance of the States and accused individuals. During its existence between the years 1993 and 2017, the ICTY has been a United Nations Court that dealt with crimes that took place in the Balkans during the 1990s, providing the victims the opportunity to voice their experience. The research is theoretical, using the Genocide Convention, Rome Statute and the Statute of ICTY in order to understand the main genocide provisions, additionally, using the court records of each of the genocide convictions, not taking into account the referrals to national courts, in order to understand what are the successes and failures of the Tribunal’s genocide proceedings. As well as, using the work of scholars in this field in order to grasp the larger debate in regards to the ICTY. Scholarly perspectives are provided both from the authors coming from the concerned area, and authors not directly influenced by the conflict in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Legal framework is of International Law and International Criminal Law as a subset of it. The method employed in the Thesis is doctrinal legal research, as well as, Yuval Shany's goal based approach in determining the effectiveness of the Tribunal in prosecuting the crime of genocide.