International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Today I met with people in the Hague about this project and other potential projects in the future. One of the meetings I had was with a woman who works at the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia.

Some notes about ICTY:

• ICTY was created as an ad hoc tribunal under the auspices on the United Nations to respond judicially to the atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia (including current Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Serbia) during the 1990s.
• There are victims and defendents as well as convicted perpetrators from Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia.
• ICTY prosecutes genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed by the highest levels of the accused perpetrators.
• ICTY is temporary and event-specific- it only has jusisdiction over certain historical events in particular territories.

This morning, I met with Michelle Jarvis from the ICTY. She is involved in the prosecution and appeals of gendered crimes.

She said that she was eager for a new perspective on the subject of rape and war, coming from outside the sociopolitical/legal realm. She enouraged me to move beyind a desrciption f the horrible problem and address the issue of what can be done.

The most salient advice she gave was to develop the analysis of the problem of sexual violence in war to address the larger (and ultimately more important question): how do these women recover and what can/should the international community do to assist survivors in the process of healing from trauma.

Michelle was friendly, intelligent, and really interested in what I was doing. I gave her a copy of my book and asked her to help me strengthen the section about the development of the crime of rape in international law. It was really encouraging to meet with her, because she is doing important work and she felt like a kindred spirit.

After this productive meeting, I was able to watch an hour of the court proceedings that were happening while I was visiting ICTY. I got to see the cross-examination of some expert witness about when he knew about the existance of the Croatian part of the current Bosnia-Hercegovina.

It was amazing to see the court, with its judges clad in red and black. Countless people were plugged in to computers as translated text scrolled by on the monitors. Audience members, judges, etc. wear earphones to listen to the translation, but I was lucky because the court was conducted in english. When the cross-examination got heated, a vexed-sounding french woman would come over the loudspeaker to remind the witness and lawyer to pause between responses for translation.

This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, to see ICTY in action, because it is a temporary, ad hoc court. It is scheduled to end in the next couple of years (I don't remember exactly when) and then it will be no more.

I feel blessed to have experienced it, even for only an hour during some kinda boring testimony. I had to get going though, because I had another meeting to attend to in the Hague...

After all this excitement, I took the tram across town to the International Criminal Court.