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2 J. Int'l Crim. Just. 533 (2004)
The Revolution by the ICTY: The Concept of Justice in Wartime

handle is hein.journals/jicj2 and id is 547 raw text is: The Revolution by the ICTY: The Concept of justice in Wartime Pierre Hazan* Is international criminal justice possible in wartime? If so, is it only desirable in the name of the overriding requirements of the search for peace? The traditional reply in international relations is to claim that international justice has no place in our Hobbesian World. The Nuremberg trial marked the first breach in this position, with the breakthrough represented by the establishment of the criminal responsibility of political and military leaders. This was, indeed, a major development, but it did not involve any fundamental change in the notion that there is a time for war and a time for peace and, henceforth, even a time for justice. The UN Security Council turned this accepted order of events on its head when it created the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), early in 1993. In its Resolutions 808 and 827, the Council decided that the new tribunal should begin to mete out justice, even before hostilities had ended. It was meant to become an instrument of deterrence, preventing the perpetration of further crimes. In substance, as Antonio Cassese, then President of the ICTY explained, only justice can break the cycle of revenge and violence.' However, a major consequence of this mandate was the exclusion of war criminals, i.e. the accused political and military leaders, from the negotiations. The Security Council's actions thus laid down a legal absolute which was eminently moral: the conditions of peace were to be subordinated to the exercise of justice. This is undoubtedly the fundamental, unique contribution to be found in the ICTY's mandate: that of reversing the normal chronology of first Journalist (Liberation); Author of La justice Face tila Guerre, de Nuremberg dLa Hape (Paris: Stock, 2000), forthcoming in the United States in an updated and expanded edition: Justice in a Time of War, From Nuremberg to the Hague (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, forthcoming 2004). 1 In the first Annual Report of the ICTY to the General Assembly, President Cassese stated in particular: 'How could a woman, who had been raped by servicemen from a different ethnic group, or a civilian whose parents or children had been killed in cold blood quell their desire for vengeance if they knew that the authors of these crimes were left unpunished and allowed to move around freely, possibly in the same town where their appalling actions had been perpetrated? The only civilized alternative to this desire for revenge is to render justice: to conduct a fair trial by a truly independent and impartial tribunal and to punish those found guilty. If no fair trial is held, feelings of hatred and resentment seething below the surface will, sooner or later, erupt and lead to renewed violence.', Annual Report of the ICTY, UN doc. A/49/342-S/1994/1007, 29 August 1994, para. 15, in ICTY, Yearbook 1994, at 86-87. Journal of International Criminal Justice 2 (2004), 533-540 Journal of International Criminal Justice 2, 2 © Oxford University Press, 2004. All rights reserved

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