ABSTRACT
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was the first international criminal tribunal since the International Military Tribunals (IMTs) in Nuremberg and Tokyo and, therefore, the embodiment of the reincarnation of international criminal justice. The establishment of the Tribunal embodied the hope of many people for an end to impunity for war criminals in the post-Cold War era. The Yugoslav War played an important role in the rise of international criminal justice for many reasons. The breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) gave rise to a conflict that, at its core, had a strategy of war crimes. As well as international audiences watching the events in Yugoslavia unfold on their televisions, so did a swathe of international and regional organisations. The UN, the European Community (EC), the Western European Union (WEU) and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) all expressed growing concern about the war that started to unfold on their doorstep.
