NOW: Yugoslavia Tribunal

In the past years, Europe’s most widely publicised court of justice has been the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. It was there that General Radislav Krstic became the first person to be convicted under the Genocide Treaty for his role as general in the Balkan War in the 1990s. Milan Martic (ethnic cleansing) and Milomir Stakic, war mayor of Prijedor (crimes against civilians in detention camps), were sentenced to 35 and 40 years imprisonment.

The Serbian politician and president of Serbia and Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, died on 11 March 2006 in the Penitentiary complex of Scheveningen where he was held in captivity while awaiting trial for war crimes. The tribunal’s youngest catch is Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time of the Balkan war. After thirteen years on the run, he was arrested in July 2008 and handed over by the Serbian authorities to the Yugoslavia tribunal in the Netherlands.

THEN: International Court of Justice

The Hague earned its title as the City of Peace and Justice after following up the organisation of the First International Peace Conference in 1899 with a second conference in 1907. Though the conference failed to advance the disarmament process,  The Hague was indelibly associated with issues of peace and justice in subsequent years. Not long afterwards the Peace Palace became the eloquent symbol of this status and new institutions dedicated to international justice and peace found a natural home there.

The most important judicial body within the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (since 1946), has its seat in the political capital of the Netherlands. In the sumptuous setting of the Peace Palace fifteen judges deliberate on the peaceful settlement of legal disputes between countries.