The Official Blog of the

Archive for the ‘The Balkan Wars’ Category

Benjamin Ferencz, Champion of World Law, Leaves a Strong Heritage on Which to Build

In Africa, Being a World Citizen, Conflict Resolution, Current Events, Europe, Human Rights, International Justice, NGOs, The Balkan Wars, The Search for Peace, Track II, United Nations, United States, War Crimes, World Law on April 18, 2023 at 7:11 AM

By René Wadlow

Benjamin Ferencz, champion of World Law and World Citizenship, died on April 7, 2023 at the age of 103, leaving a strong heritage of action for world law. He was particularly active in the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) located in the Hague.

He was born in March 1920 in what is now Romania, close to the frontiers of Hungary and Ukraine. In the troubled period after the end of the First World War, the parents of Ferencz, who were Jews, decided to emigrate to New York with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. They settled in New York City, and Ferencz changed his Yiddish name Berrel to Benjamin and studied in the New York school system. He did his undergraduate work at City College and then received a scholarship to Harvard Law School, a leading United States (U. S.) law school.

(C) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

At the end of his law studies at Harvard, he was taken into the U. S. Army and in 1944, he was in Europe with the Army legal section, the Judge-Advocate General Corps. By conviction and interest, he began to collect information on the Nazi concentration camps. He was able to find photos, letters, and other material that he later was able to use as one of the prosecution team in the Nuremberg trials of Germans accused of war crimes. He was also a staff member of the Joint Restitution Successor Organization concerned with the restoration or compensation of goods having belonged to Jewish families. Thus, he developed close cooperation with the then recently created state of Israel.

(C) Leit

From his experiences with the German trials and the many difficulties that the trials posed to be more than the justice of the victors and also the need not to antagonize the recently created Federal Republic of Germany, Ferencz became a strong advocate of an international legal system such as the Tribunals on ex-Yugoslavia of 1993 and on Rwanda (1994). Much of his effort was directed to the creation of the ICC, a creation that owes much to efforts of nongovernmental organizations, such as the Association of World Citizens. It was during this effort for the creation of the ICC that we came into contact.

Benjamin Ferencz leaves a heritage on which we can build. The development of world law is often slow and meets opposition. However, the need is great, and strong efforts at both national and international levels continue.

(C) Adam Jones

(1) See Benjamin B. Ferencz, A Common Sense Guide to World Peace (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1985).

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

OSCE: Strains and Renewal in the Security Community

In Being a World Citizen, Conflict Resolution, Current Events, Democracy, Europe, Human Development, Human Rights, The Balkan Wars, The former Soviet Union, The Search for Peace, World Law on August 2, 2015 at 9:29 AM

OSCE: STRAINS AND RENEWAL IN THE SECURITY COMMUNITY

By René Wadlow

On August 1, 2015, the Helsinki Final Act, the birth certificate of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) turned 40. The Final Act signed in Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall was the result of three years of nearly continuous negotiations among government representatives meeting for the most part in Geneva, Switzerland as well as years of promotion of better East-West relations by non-governmental peace builders.

Basically, one can date the planting of the seeds that grew into the OSCE as 1968 in two cities: Paris and Prague. The student-led demonstrations in Paris which sent shock waves to other university centers from California to Berlin showed that under a cover of calm, there was a river of demands and desires for a new life, a more cooperative and creative way of life.

In Prague, the Prague Spring of internal reforms and demands for a freer European society was met by the tanks of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in August. Yet some far-sighted individuals saw that 1968 was a turning point in European history and that there could be no return to the 1945 divisions of two Europes with the Berlin Wall as the symbol of that division. Thus, in small circles, there were those who started asking “Where do we go from here?”

A Security Community: A Halfway House

In 1957, Karl W. Deutsch (1912-1992) published an important study, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton University Press). Karl Deutsch was born to a German-speaking family in Prague in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family was active in socialist party politics and became strongly anti-Nazi. Seeing what might happen, Deutsch and his wife left Prague in 1939 for the USA where he became a leading political science-international relations professor. I knew Karl Deutsch in the mid-1950s when I was a university student at Princeton, and he was associated with a Center on International Organization at Princeton. It was there that he was developing his ideas on types of integration among peoples and States and that he coined the term “security community” to mean a group of people “believing that they had come to agreement on at least one point that common social problems must and can be resolved by processes of peaceful change.” For Deutsch, the concept of a security community could be applied to people coming together to form a State: His approach was much used in the 1960s in the study of “nation building” especially of post-colonial African States. A “security community” could also be a stage in relations among States as the term has become common in OSCE thinking. For Deutsch, a security community was a necessary halfway house before the creation of a State or a multi-State federation. Deutsch stressed the need for certain core values which created a sense of mutual identity and loyalty leading to self-restraint and good-faith negotiations to settle disputes.

Core values established and quickly disappeared

During the negotiations leading to the Helsinki Final Act, a set of 10 core values or commitments were set out, sometimes called the OSCE Decalogue after the “Ten Commandments”. “Sovereign equality, respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty and non-intervention in internal affairs” set the framework as well as the limitations of any efforts toward a supranational institution. The two other related core values were “the territorial integrity of States and the inviolability of frontiers.”

The core values were not so much “values” as a reflection of the status quo of the Cold War years. By the time that the Charter of Paris for a New Europe was signed in November 1990, marking the formal end of the Cold War, “territorial integrity and the inviolability of frontiers” as values had disappeared.

The 1990s saw the breakup of two major European federations − that of Yugoslavia and the USSR. Most of the work of the OSCE has been devoted to the consequences of these two breakups. Yugoslavia broke into nearly all the pieces that it could with a few exceptions. I had been asked to help support the independence of Sandzak, a largely Muslim area in Serbia and part of Montenegro. I declined, having thought at the time that with a few modifications the Yugoslav federation could be kept together. I was wrong, and the OSCE is still confronted by tensions in Kosovo, renewed tensions in Macedonia, an unlikely form of government in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as social issues of trafficking in persons, arms, drugs and uncontrolled migration.

The breakup of the Soviet Union has led to a full agenda of OSCE activities. The republics of the Soviet Union had been designed by Joseph Stalin, then Commissioner for Nationalities so that each republic could not become an independent State but would have to look to the central government for security and socio-economic development. Each Soviet republic had minority populations though each was given the name of the majority or dominant ethnic group called a “nationality”.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, there have been recurrent issues involving the degree of autonomy of geographic space and the role of minorities. The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh had already started before the breakup, but continues to this day with its load of refugees, displaced persons and the calmer but unlikely twin, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. Moldova and Transdniestria remain a “frozen conflict” with a 1992 ceasefire agreement. The armed conflicts in Chechnya and violence in Dagestan highlighted conflicts within the Russian Federation. The 2008 “Guns of August” conflict over South Ossetia between Russia and Georgia showed that autonomy issues could slip out of control and have Europe-wide consequences.

(C) Sadankomitea

(C) Sadankomitea

A Cloudy Cristal Ball

Predictions, especially about the future, are always difficult. In 2013, the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Leonid Kazhara, said “We wish to contribute to the establishment of the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security community free of dividing lines, conflicts, spheres of influence and zones with different levels of security … There is a pressing need to, first of all, change our mindsets from confrontational thinking to a cooperative approach. I am confident that Ukraine, with its rich history, huge cultural heritage and clear European aspirations is well placed for carrying out this mission.”

Today, Ukraine’s rich history has a new chapter, recreating old dividing lines and spheres of influence. The shift in “ownership” of Crimea indicates that “territorial integrity of States” is a relative commitment. The large number of persons going to Russia as refugees and to west Ukraine as internally-displaced persons recalls the bad days of displacement of the Second World War. NATO has dangerously over-reacted to events in Ukraine.

It is not clear that the current leaders of the 57 governments of the OSCE have the wisdom or skills to lead to a renewal of the Security Community. Yet when one looks at the photos of the government leaders who did sign the Helsinki Final Act 40 years ago, there are few faces indicating wisdom or diplomatic skills so perhaps all is not lost today. Very likely, as in the period between the events of 1968 and the start of government negotiations in 1972, there will need to be nongovernmental voices setting out new ideas and creating bridges between people.

Prof. René Wadlow is President and Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.

Ratko Mladić: Arrest and Coming Trial – A Step Forward for World Law

In Current Events, Human Rights, International Justice, The Balkan Wars, The Search for Peace, United Nations on May 27, 2011 at 7:23 PM

RATKO MLADIĆ: ARREST AND COMING TRIAL – A STEP FORWARD FOR WORLD LAW

By René Wadlow

On May 26, 2011, President Boris Tadić of Serbia announced the arrest of General Ratko Mladić, the Yugoslav general become head of the Bosnian Serb forces of Republika Srpska. General Mladić had been charged by the War Crimes Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia in the Hague for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and thus should be sent from Belgrade to the Hague to stand trial shortly. General Mladić is particularly charged with commending the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo during which much of the city was destroyed and some 10,000 persons killed, often shot by snipers. The genocide charge arises mainly from the killing in July 1995 of some 8,000 Muslim men at Srebrenica which had been declared a neutral safe haven guarded by UN troops.

Mladić had been forced from his position in Republika Srpska after the 1995 Dayton Agreement, largely facilitated by the US envoy Richard Holbrooke. Mladić moved to Serbia and lived mostly in Belgrade, having changed his name. He was arrested at the farm of a cousin some 50 miles north of Belgrade in the Vojvodina area. His arrest and trial was one of the conditions set by the European Union for advancing with negotiations on Serbia joining the EU. Negotiations are now at a serious stage, and the arrest of Mladić was necessary to open the door further. Mladić kept out of sight, but he was not hiding. He had supporters in the Serbian army, police and in certain nationalist political circles. Thus an arrest earlier would not have been worth the political outcries and tensions an arrest might have provoked. Now, when EU membership and the economic future of the country are at stake, his arrest is not a very high price to pay.

Ratko Mladić, here as the Bosnian Serb forces' top general during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1922-1995).

It is not really satisfaction when one sees those who have betrayed one’s proposals are finally taken down. However, there is a sense of “closure” – a recognition that karma is finally at work. I did not know Ratko Mladić but saw him a number of times in the halls of the Palais des Nations — the European Headquarters of the United Nations (UN). I was in contact with Radovan Karadžić, the political head of the Bosnian Serbs — officially Prime Minister of Republika Srpska. I had been asked to be an advisor to Karadžić on UN procedures when negotiations began in Geneva in 1992. After discussions, I turned down the offer although it would have been a possibility to be a direct participant in the negotiations.

Whatever credibility I had in the Yugoslav conflict came from being a neutral and not linked to one side, although I was generally seen as pro-Serb. My first efforts had been to help Milan Babić, the leader of the Serb enclave in Croatia called Krajina. I had Babić address the UN Commission on Human Rights in February 1991 to warn of the consequences if Yugoslavia broke up. His presentation was filmed and widely shown on Yugoslav TV. I am still convinced that had his warning been taken seriously, things might have been different. However, the Commission on Human Rights was not really equipped to deal with “early warning”, and nothing was done until fighting broke out in June 1991.

Here with then General Ratko Mladić, former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadžić.

In June, Krajina declared its independence from Croatia, calling itself the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Babić was named Prime Minister. From August to December 1991, Serbs from Krajina killed hundreds of Croats and drove some 80,000 from their homes. Ratko Mladić was the head of the Krajina forces at the time and a close co-worker with Babić.

In 1992, Babić was eased out of power by behind-the-scenes pressures by Prime Minister of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, who wanted someone with a less independent character, at which time Mladić left Krajina and went to Bosnia where he had been born.

In 2004 Babić was sentenced to 13 years in prison for war crimes by the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague and shortly afterwards committed suicide.

On July 11, 1995, General Ratko Mladić and his troops stormed the Bosnian Safe Haven of Srebrenica. With the most unwelcome participation of UN peacekeepers there, they secured the place for the Bosnian Serb army and took some 7,000 unarmed Bosnian civilians to their death.

In March 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia, and at the same time, Republika Srpska declared itself independent under the leadership of Radovan Karadžić. Many at the time questioned the wisdom of a unilateral splitting of Bosnia, but Mladić said “The existence of the Republika Srpska may be contested internationally, but the existence of its army cannot be contested. The Republika Srpska exists because we have our territory, our nation, our government and all the attributes of a state. Whether they acknowledge it or not — that’s their problem. The army is the fact.”

A month later, in April 1992, the siege of Sarajevo began with Ratko Mladić in charge of the Serb forces. The siege was to illustrate that a multi-ethnic society could not exist, Sarajevo being the Yugoslav city with the most ethnically-mixed population.

I had been in Belgrade in 1991 at the start of the Yugoslav fighting, just at the time of the fall of Vukovar, the first major battle, to see if NGOs could play any role in conflict reduction. But once the fighting had broken out there was really nothing that NGOs could do to prevent the spread of the conflict. The International Committee of the Red Cross tried, with great difficulty, to maintain some humanitarian efforts, but NGO conflict mediation was not really possible.

In September 1992, with fighting still going on, the Geneva Peace Conference on Bosnia began at the UN headquarters under the co-leadership of Lord David Owen on behalf of the EC and Mr. Cyrus Vance, former U. S. Secretary of State for the UN. Vance later withdrew, discouraged by the lack of progress and was replaced by Thorvald Stoltenberg, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway.

Lord David Owen, Special Representative of the European Community for Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the UN Special Envoy, former U. S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Late in 1992, as fighting was increasing and political proposals for the future of Bosnia were bogged down, David Arnott, an English Buddhist who had been working with me on Burma issues and I were the first to propose in the UN Commission on Human Rights and in a text sent to the members of the UN Security Council the creation of a number of security zones or “safe areas” within Bosnia-Herzegovina. I had been working closely with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a former Prime Minister of Poland, who was the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on ex-Yugoslavia. In his November 1992 Report to the Commission, he had proposed the establishment of a security zone encompassing Sarajevo and its airport in order to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian supplies.

Building on this proposal, in an oral statement of December 1, 1992 to the “Special Session of the Commission on Human Rights devoted to Human Rights in Former Yugoslavia”, I stressed the need to create a larger number of safe havens and emphasized “that the declaration of protected Safe Haven Zones is an interim arrangement with a humanitarian purpose and in no way reduces the urgent and imperative need to find negotiated political solutions.”

Safe havens, called neutralized zones, are provided for in article 15 of the 4th Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949. On October 30, 1992, the International Committee of the Red Cross had proposed that “protected zones be set up for the civilian population at risk, away from combat areas. They would not be intended for the inhabitants of besieged towns for whose protection other solutions should be found, such as a cessation of hostilities.” This was basically a call for protected refugee camps while ours was for “protected cities” since ‘cessation of hostilities’ were not in the cards.

General Sir Michael Rose, the British senior military man who in 1994 served as Commander of the Bosnian segment of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR Bosnia). When the Bosnian Serb army attacked a UN-declared Safe Haven for the first time (that was Goražde in April 1994), General Rose and his UNPROFOR troops stood idle and let the Bosnian Serbs invade the city.

Thus our proposal was not original but rather what was needed for the hour. On April 16, 1993, the UN Security Council proclaimed Srebrenica a safety zone and on May 6 added Sarajevo, Žepa, Goražde, Bihać and Tuzla to the list. Our proposal was quoted by the then Ambassador of Afghanistan, Mr. Farhadi, during the debate on safe havens.

Thus I followed with interest how the safe havens were put into place. Srebrenica had been a middle-sized town of 6,000 prior to the fighting. It had grown to over 70,000 as families left the countryside for the relative safety of the town; infrastructure, however, could not keep up.

In July 1995, the “safe havens” of Žepa and Srebrenica were taken over by the forces led by Ratko Mladić. The UN forces led by soldiers from the Netherlands did not try to resist. A month earlier in June, UN forces had been taken hostage for two weeks but finally were released. Although NATO planes were dropping bombs on Serb positions at the time, it is not clear that any NATO forces would have come to the defense of the Dutch. The UN troops stood by as Mladić separated the women and children from the men. He had his soldiers kill some 8,000 male prisoners and had their bodies put into mass graves.

General Philippe Morillon, the French peacekeeper whose efforts to protect the UN-designated Safe Havens quickly made him a living legend in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

There had been so many violations of the laws of war and human rights in the Yugoslav conflicts, that there was not much public outcry at the time, although Tadeusz Mazowiecki resigned his UN position as Special Rapporteur writing to the UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and making his letter public that his resignation was forced by the “horrendous tragedy which has beset the population of those ‘safe havens’ guaranteed by international agreement…I believe we have a certain hypocrisy as far as Bosnia is concerned when we are claiming to defend it but in fact we are abandoning it. The same goes for hypocrisy about the protection of human rights. I hope that my decision will also be understood as a protest against this hypocrisy.”

The wheels of karma turn slowly. As there is no longer anything at stake, more people today will agree that killing people who thought that they were protected in UN-proclaimed safe havens is not a good thing. There have been no new proposals for safe havens since and thus none has been created. I still think that it was a good idea at the time. Yet I share the observation of Michèle Mercier who had been for a long time part of the International Committee of the Red Cross team in former Yugoslavia “The word most frequently heard in the ranks of humanitarian workers is frustration. Their leaders are powerless to settle by themselves the problems involved with security and they have worn themselves out negotiating and renegotiating with opposite numbers of the most unlikely kind agreements that lose all their meaning before they are reached.” (1)

René Wadlow is Senior Vice-President and Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.

(1)  Michèle Mercier Crimes Without Punishment: Humanitarian Action in Former Yugoslavia (London: Pluto Press, 1995, p. 165)