Ratification of Rome Statute by Guatemalan Congress

Impunity Watch welcomes the ratification of the Rome Statute by the Guatemalan Congress and additionally welcomes the recent progress achieved in the Ixil Genocide case.
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Breaking the wave: critical steps in the fight against crime in Guatemala

New report points to critical steps that must be taken for Guatemala to overcome its plague of criminal violence.
Impunity Watch and the Conflict Research Unit of the Clingendael Institute today jointly publish a major new report detailing the immense challenges faced by the Guatemalan criminal justice system as a new right-wing government takes power in the country.

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One vacancy at IW

IW is looking for a Research Coordinator (Principal Researcher) for our Burundi Programme, based in Burundi.
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Santa Lucía book presentation

On 25 September 2011 IW and Solidaridad presented a remembrance book in the "Doopsgezinde kerk" in Haarlem. The book tells the story of 30 men and women from Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala who disappeared or were killed during the 36-year internal conflict.
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Understanding The Role Of Memory Initiatives In Communities Struggling With Impunity

Debating in the Netherlands
with youth, experts and policy-makers
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The Persistence of Truth

This report looks at progress in truth-seeking and the combat of impunity in Guatemala ten years after its UN-backed truth comission, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), published its findings on the events of the internal armed confrontation of 1960-96.
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NEWS ARCHIVE

Serbia called on to echo EU resolution on Bosnian genocide

20/02/2009 - On 15 January 2009, the European Parliament took an important step in the combat of impunity for grave human rights abuses by calling on the European Union’s institutions and member states, as well as the countries of the western Balkans, “to commemorate appropriately the anniversary of the Srebrenica-Potočari act of genocide by supporting Parliament's recognition of 11 July as a day of commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide”.

In a resolution passed almost unanimously, the parliament expressed its condolences and solidarity with the victims of the massacre of over 8000 men and boys which took place in eastern Bosnia over several days in early July 2005, and called for further efforts to apprehend remaining war crimes fugitives. Stressing that “bringing to justice those responsible for the massacres in and around Srebrenica is an important step towards peace and stability in the region”, it expressed its full support for the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and called for more attention to be paid to domestic war crimes trials.

In response to this development, on 11 February, a group of six Serbian civil society organisations demanded that President Boris Tadic support the EU initiative and pay homage to Bosnia’s war victims by designating 11 July “Srebrenica Genocide Remembrance Day”. The organisations – the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), Women in Black, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (HOS), Centre for Advancement of Legal Studies, Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM) and Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) – reminded the Serbian president that the electorate had clearly expressed its will to have the country join the EU, making the authorities “duty-bound to endorse this Resolution”. They also underlined Serbia’s obligation, as laid out in the 2007 judgment of the International Court of Justice in the Bosnia vs Serbia genocide case, to distance itself from war crimes committed in Bosnia in the 1990s.

Impunity Watch supports this initiative, led by its partners, the HLC, HOS, YUCOM and YIHR, and other Serbian human rights groups, and reminds the Serbian state that the combat of impunity following conflict requires “symbolic measures intended to provide moral reparation, such as formal public recognition by the state of its responsibility, or official declarations aimed at restoring victims' dignity, [and] commemorative ceremonies”.

Pointing to the similar recommendations made by Impunity Watch and its partners to state institutions and civil society organisations in the recently published report, Dealing with Impunity in Serbia - Options and Obstacles, it appeals to the President of Serbia to support this latest initiative and designate 11 July the Srebrenica Genocide Remembrance Day as a way of commemorating, honouring and remembering the victims of the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.

This initiative is also supported in Serbia by the Coalition for Tolerance – Against Hate Crimes, Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Sandzak Committee for Human Rights, Sandzak Intellectual Circle, Fund for an Open Society and Queeria Centre.

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