ODIHR helps transfer war crimes knowledge from The Hague to local courts

Some time over the next two or three years, the first international war crimes hearings since the post-World War II Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals are scheduled to come to a close.

They will be a hard act to follow.

Since it began investigating and prosecuting war crimes in March 1993, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has become "the most significant actor in the development of international criminal law and the enforcement of international humanitarian law", according to its President, Judge Patrick Robinson.

Preserving expertise

Now, with the ICTY having begun to transfer responsibility for pending cases to national jurisdictions in the Balkans, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) is moving to ensure that the expertise developed in the Hague is not squandered.

In January this year, a three-person Research Team set up by ODIHR wound up interviews with leading practitioners involved in the processing of war crimes at the ICTY and in the region.

Working closely with the OSCE field operations - the organization's key actors in South-Eastern Europe - the team talked to more than 90 investigators, prosecutors, defence lawyers, judges, victim/witness support staff and outreach personnel.

The initiative - part of the "Supporting the Transition Process: Lessons Learned and Best Practices in Knowledge Transfer" research project conducted with the ICTY and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) - seeks to identify lessons learned and best practices in strengthening the capacity of domestic judiciaries to effectively and efficiently handle war crimes cases.

The aim of the interviews was to hear practitioners' assessments of the work of those involved in training on war crimes issues and, in particular, their views on which capacity-building and knowledge-transfer activities were most effective.

Lessons learned

"The OSCE's missions have already long been involved in preparing local professionals to take over the ICTY's role," explains Carsten Weber, Chief of ODIHR's Rule of Law Unit.

"The interviews helped us to identify not only what the national authorities consider as priorities for future capacity building activities, but also which methodologies to use," says Vic Ullom, who headed the Research Team.

"I am talking about the actual mechanisms of transferring knowledge. We need to rely more on hands-on practical training and peer-to-peer meetings and a little less on one-off training sessions and seminars that may only last a morning or a day at most."

"We are dealing with very complex problems - that's why most of our interviewees were strongly in favour of a longer-term approach ... various ongoing series of events that take into account the local context and local conditions," Ullom adds.

Time running short

The project partners are working within a tight timeframe, however.

"The ICTY closing date is drawing nearer, so the window of opportunity to preserve the legacy of the Tribunal is narrowing all the time," ODIHR's Weber acknowledges.

"To safeguard properly the ICTY's institutional memory, we needed to tap into the experiences of staff, partners and interlocutors while the memories of their experiences were still fresh."

With those memories captured in the Research Team's interim report, the next task was to discuss preliminary findings and recommendations at a regional workshop, hosted by the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina and co-organized by ODIHR in Sarajevo from 13 to 15 May.

"It was a unique opportunity to review with a critical eye our previous performance and seek to harmonize case-prosecution standards with international criminal and humanitarian law through an exchange of experiences at the regional level," reports Hilmo Vucinic, a judge with the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Over 60 regional actors - the ultimate beneficiaries of the project - were invited to discuss the interim report and prioritize the recommendations it contained.

The delegates' most urgent proposal was for the creation of a mechanism through which ICTY transcripts could be made available in local languages.

They also called for immediate support for the region's judicial and prosecutorial training academies and emphasized the pressing need for legal materials and electronic research and analytical tools.

Essential guide

The final report of the project - to be released and widely distributed in the fall - will take account of the workshop participants' comments and serve as an essential guide for those engaged in capacity building in the arena of war crimes trials.

"It has taken the ICTY 16 years to build up the incredible know-how it commands," ICTY President Robinson points out.

"We wish to make sure that our experience is well documented and that it can benefit those who will continue our work, particularly in the region," Robinson says.

"That is the essence of the Tribunal's legacy, and our joint project with ODIHR and UNICRI is one of the key tools for achieving that goal."