WHERE WE WORK

SERBIA

The Serbian state played a pivotal role in the wars that took place on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the crimes that accompanied them. Its government gave logistical, financial and political assistance to the ethnic-Serb forces that committed crimes in Croatia and Bosnia between 1991 and, and occasionally sent its own regular and paramilitary troops to participate in those conflicts. Regular Serbian police and army units under the direct control of the Belgrade government committed the bulk of crimes in Kosovo during the 1999 conflict there. 

 

The legacy of those crimes affects Serbia to this day. Even after the fall of its wartime leader, Slobodan Milosevic, incomplete institutional reforms, unreformed security services, and the existence of firmly entrenched groups with an interest in preventing accountability have disrupted Serbia’s attempts to fully democratise. By blocking full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, they have also slowed down Serbia’s European integration. 

 

Serbia’s current government, dominated by democratic forces, gives reason to hope for the emergence of pro-European policies and a catch-up with the rest of the region in terms of European integration. This process would offer the country a chance to round its long and uneasy democratic transformation – but in order to accomplish this, all parties involved need to acknowledge the specific past that precedes it, and the long shadow it continues to cast on Serbian politics and society. Serbia's democratic development and relations with its neighbours depend on its ability to overcome the political and institutional legacy of those crimes.

 

After Guatemala, Serbia is the first country in which IW decided to establish a Country Focus Programme. The project cycle involves: partnership with key local CSOs to analyse the causes, features and consequences of impunity for conflict-era crimes, based on a specially-designed research methodology; followed by policy consultations with a wider group of key stakeholders, state and non-state; the production and advocacy of policy recommendations for combating impunity; and the monitoring of state and other relevant groups in relation to this issue.


Impunity Watch–Serbia is a joint project of IW and four Serbian non-governmental organisations with an extensive record in combating impunity:

 

The programme is run from IW local office in Belgrade, headed by country coordinator Ljiljana Hellman.

 

Programme to date

IW is currently completing the first part of its project cycle in Serbia, with the imminent publication of an in-depth research report carried out with its partners into the root causes of impunity. This report is based on the unique IW research methodology, adapted with partners in early 2007 for implementation in Serbia. It is multi-disciplinary, covering normative framework, resources and capacity of relevant institutions, independence and willingness of key players to combat impunity, political will to do the same, the existence and nature of entrenched interests as an obstacle to achieving accountability for conflict-era crimes, and societal factors. An online document repository, accessible via IW’s website, will serve as a searchable data-bank for all information collected.


In its draft version, the research report was distributed in autumn 2008 to a wide range of stakeholders in the governmental and non-governmental sector as a basis for consultative policy-making meetings. These produced policy recommendations, to be published along with the final report, for combating the root causes of impunity throughout the state apparatus and society, which have the endorsement of the widest possible range of stakeholders and so go much further than current arrangements towards tackling the problem and bringing TJRNR.

The aim of these policy consultations was equally to promote the key role civil society has to play in tackling impunity, by alerting otherwise inaccessible and unresponsive decisionmakers to the scale and quality of their research and its findings, and encouraging channels of communication to open on a regular basis.

Throughout, partners have received full support from, and been coordinated by, IW staff, with in-depth training provided where specific needs were identified. Foundations have also been laid for the long-term cooperation of partners when it comes to working towards the eradication of impunity, highlighting the way platform-building can increase efficiency and results.

 

Programme 2009-10

At the beginning of 2009, with its comprehensive research findings and policy proposals published, the IW Serbia programme shall enter its second two-year stage, whereby IW shall work with its partners to lobby for the policy recommendations to be adopted; design and implement long-term monitoring of the state’s international obligations in relation to impunity; and stimulate additional, smaller research-for-policy projects, focusing on issues drawn from the findings of the 2008 report and extending scope to include neighbouring countries. Moreover, it shall seek to engage more civil society and expert partners and design in consultation with them an increasingly autonomous IW platform that can continue to combat impunity in a sustainable way. Throughout, it shall include outreach towards grassroots organisations, particularly victims groups, and seek constructive dialogue with state actors.