ID | 114967 |
Title Proper | Justice and democracy in the Balkans |
Language | ENG |
Author | Pond, Elizabeth |
Publication | 2012. |
Summary / Abstract (Note) | If any nation seemed destined to succeed at painful post-war transitional justice, it was Serbia after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic. The country's seven million Serbs, even if they did not enjoy rule of law as they emerged from the brutal Balkan wars of the 1990s, did have established courts and other institutions that could be made to serve the interests of justice. They had a rambunctious civil society that deposed Milosevic (with the help of a mobilising election and the defection of some of his thugs) in 2000. In Zoran Djindjic they had a crusading prime minister who defied public opinion to extradite Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague in 2001. They had prosecutors willing to indict far more of their own ethnic group for war crimes committed in the 1990s Balkan wars than were neighbouring Croat, Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Kosovar prosecutors. And the Serbs had the European Union next door to nurture and nudge their country toward democratic best practices on its way to eventual EU membership. |
`In' analytical Note | Survival : the IISS Quarterly Vol. 54, No.2; Apr-May 2012: p.77-96 |
Journal Source | Survival : the IISS Quarterly Vol. 54, No.2; Apr-May 2012: p.77-96 |
Key Words | Serbia ; Justice ; Democracy ; Balkans ; International Criminal Tribunal ; European Union |