The Hague - The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is located in one of the nicer and most tranquil neighbourhoods of The Hague. The area is rich with parks and broad boulevards. The Madurodam amusement park is a 15-minute walk away; even the seashore is within reach. Little betrays that within the walls of the building some of the worst atrocities committed in Europe since World War II are being discussed in detail on a daily basis.
It was former German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel who originally proposed the establishment of a special war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The mass media and non-governmental organizations had reported atrocities since the start of the conflict in south-east Europe. Television news depicted horrendous crimes, that claimed an estimated 100,000 lives - many of them civilians. Many more were injured, tortured and sexually abused in detention camps during the conflict; hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes.
Kinkel emphasized the need to prosecute those responsible for war crimes. On May 1993, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution establishing the ICTY, the first war crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals.
Contrary to the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, also based in The Hague, the Yugoslavia tribunal would be a temporary court, to be closed down once proceedings would be concluded.
The tribunal, which in 2009 worked with a budget of around 343 million dollars, employs more than 1,000 people of 82 nationalities.
Three trial chambers and one appeals chamber, staffed with 16 permanent and 12 ad litem or temporarily judges, ensure that multiple proceedings can take place simultaneously.
The office of the prosecutor, currently headed by Belgian Serge Brammertz, is the third organ, investigating and prosecuting cases, fully independent from any of the other ICTY organs, governments or organizations.
Since its establishment, the ICTY has indicted a total of 161 people. Eighty-eight cases involving 120 defendants have been concluded and 41 people are still standing trial in 18 ongoing cases. Sixty people have been sentenced, 11 were acquitted, while the indictments of 36 people were ultimately withdrawn.
Those charged by the ICTY include heads of state, prime ministers, army chiefs-of-staff, interior ministers and many other high- and mid-level political, military and police leaders from all ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia.
However, in practise, most cases that have come before the tribunal concerned alleged crimes committed by Serbs and Bosnian Serbs.
Legal experts vary in their opinions about the work done by the ICTY, but all agree that its mere existence has contributed to the development and particularly the fine-tuning of international criminal law.
As a result of the trials conducted at the ICTY, rape, to name just one thing, has come to be recognized in international law as a war crime and a means of terror.
The ICTY has also done groundbreaking work in tackling the problem of personal liability how to prove, for example, that someone is responsible for atrocities committed by his subordinates.
According to Harmen van der Wilt, an expert on international tribunals at the University of Amsterdam, much work remains to be done, but the nature of international criminal law "is by definition dynamic, and requires continuous adjustment."
