Croatian genocide suit in ICJ jurisdiction

Croatian genocide suit in ICJ jurisdiction
18 November 2008 | 11:39 -> 13:07 | Source: B92, Tanjug
BELGRADE, THE HAGUE — The International Court of Justice has today declared itself competent to handle a lawsuit filed by Croatia against Serbia for charges of genocide.

The International Court of Justice (FoNet, archive)

The decision was announced by Court President Rosalyn Higgins, who outlined the reasoning of the 17-member panel of judges.

Following today’s decision, unless the two sides reach an out-of-court settlement–which seems unlikey–a debate will be held on the nature of the suit on whether genocide was committed in Croatia, and whether Serbia was responsible for it.

Serbia will then a have a year to prepare its defense and launch a potential counter-suit against Croatia for genocide against Serbs, for which the Belgrade legal team has already been readying itself. The case would be unlikely to begin for another two years

The ICJ rejected Belgrade’s argument that the case was outside the Court’s purview as Serbia could not be held responsible for crimes perpetrated at a time when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia did not exist and was not a UN member, and therefore not a signatory of the Convention on Genocide.

10 of the 17 judges voted that the Court was competent to hear the case.

The court ruled that although the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s status in the UN had been “unclear”, the authorities in Belgrade had recognized the ICJ’s jurisdiction in the Nineties, in responding to Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia’s suits and in lodging its own suit against NATO member-states.

Under the ruling, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s declaration of April 1992, submitted to the UN General Assembly, was tantamount to announcing its assumption of all international commitments stemming from membership of international organizations and conventions, including the Convention on Genocide.

As a result, the Court’s jurisdiction in proceedings launched between 1992 and 2000 had been clearly established, Higgins explained.

In the suit lodged in 1999, Croatian claimed that Belgrade was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Croatian citizens, as a form of genocide, because it “directly controlled the activities of its armed forces, intelligence agents and various paramilitary units that perpetrated crimes in Croatia, in the Knin region, and in eastern and western Slavonia and Dalmatia.”

The two sides’ arguments

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B92

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