29 November 2017 - Slobodan Praljak, one of the six Defence appellants in the Prlić case, at the Appeals Judgement, November, 2017. Flickr/ UN International Criminal Tribunal. Some rights reserved. After a quarter of a century of activity, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) closed its doors at the end of 2017. It was the first international criminal court to be established after the experiences of Nuremberg and Tokyo, restoring hope that the perpetrators of international crimes could be prosecuted even outside their own state.
It is not surprising, therefore, that those who care about the defence of human rights have carefully observed this venture. After the institution of the ICTY, other international tribunals were activated, including the ad hoc tribunal for Rwanda and the hybrid tribunals for Sierra Leone, Cambodia and East Timor. But, above all, the International Criminal Court, which came to life in 1998.
Numbers show that the ICTY achieved partial success: of the 162 indicted, all were caught, 90 convicted, 19 acquitted, the others transferred to national courts, or had their proceedings suspended. The Tribunal has developed the existing norms of international criminal accountability considerably and generated important precedents.
