On this day twenty years ago, Serbian paramilitary erected barricades in Sarajevo, effectively dividing and encircling the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, beginning the longest siege in modern history during which some 11,000 people were killed.

The Sarajevo siege marked the beginning of a brutal three-year conflict which resulted in more than 100,000 dead, over a million expelled, and systematic campaigns of rape and persecution, bringing back the images of emaciated inmates of concentration camps unseen on European soil since World War II.

The atrocities committed in Bosnia forced the international community to react, and in 1993 the first international war crimes court since Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals was established. Out of 161 persons indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the vast majority were charged with crimes committed on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ever since the war ended with the Dayton Peace Accords signed in November 1995, the country has been undergoing a slow and painful process of addressing the legacy of crimes committed during the conflict. War crimes cases are being heard at the State Court in Sarajevo and district courts around the country. There have been several failed attempts to form a truth commission, and Bosnia is central to the current initiative to establish a regional truth-seeking body, REKOM.

The search of the disappeared people continues with some 9,500 still registered as missing. Although some victims’ families receive assistance from regional governments, a comprehensive victims’ reparations law is still to be adopted at the state level. The same goes for memorials, they have been erected primarily in areas where victims belong to the majority ethnic groups, but there is no agreement at the level of the state on a law that would allow memorials in places where crimes occurred.

In this podcast Refik Hodzic, our communications director and a Bosnian justice activist and journalist, discusses the obstacles Bosnia is facing in achieving a reckoning with its troubled recent past.

Children are among those most affected by the consequences of conflict and repression. As of 2010 over one billion children worldwide lived in territories affected by armed conflict. Yet the idea of incorporating children's participation in post-conflict or post-authoritarian transitional justice measures is surprisingly new.

At the formal launch last week of ICTJ's report "Through a New Lens: A Child-Sensitive Approach to Transitional Justice," ICTJ president David Tolbert, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy, and former president of the Sierra Leone Children's Forum Network Messeh Kamara explored how to better incorporate the perspectives and needs of children in these processes.

Following the discussion, ICTJ spoke further with Messeh Kamara about his experience growing up during the Sierra Leone civil war and the instrumental role he played in advocating for the inclusion of children in truth and justice processes after the conflict.

Kamara argues that a transitional justice process that successfully takes a child-sensitive approach will include the voices of youth not just in the consultation phase, but also in the implementation of recommendations.

"Consultation is not just when you call a group of children together and ask them about their views… consultation must go beyond that, to also involve children in the implementation of these processes... without implementation, there is no point to be engaged in these processes."

He suggested other truth and reconciliation measures—such as in Kenya—look at the failures and success of the Sierra Leone process.

Kamara commended the work of ICTJ in producing a report that provides an in-depth examination of the lessons learned from past or ongoing measures.

"I feel [the report] is very important; it's a clarion call to the international community, to our national government, to our communities, to see children not just as people who can be targeted but as people that have their own rights."

Following a decade of civil war marked by intense violence meted out against civilians, the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations jointly established the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) to try those most responsible for gross violations of human rights. On the tenth anniversary of the formal end to this conflict Binta Mansaray, registrar of the SCSL, discusses the impact the court has had in Sierra Leone and the lessons its process can afford other international judicial mechanisms.

Crucial to the success of the Special Court was that it was accessible to victims, Mansaray argued, thanks to an extensive outreach program to ensure the larger population was both aware and a part of the process.

“The fact that this court was based in the country where the crimes took place gave us the unique opportunity to interact with the larger society,” she said. “If you’re dispensing justice, you’re doing it in the name of those who suffered. So they should be able to have the opportunity to be part of the process.”

That the court is based in Sierra Leone has also had a crucial impact on capacity building. “Because we are based in the country, we are able to work with institutions in the justice sector where our impact is felt,” Mansaray said. To ensure its own effectiveness, the SCSL undertook projects as diverse as rebuilding national judicial capacity, creating the basis for a national archive, training police prosecutors and national security officers, and establishing a witness protection program.

An examination of the SCSL underscores the interconnectivity between development and justice. The success of the court’s proceedings relied on the development and rebuilding of judicial and security infrastructure after 10 years of war destroyed most institutions.

But the relationship goes both ways, Mansaray pointed out. “You cannot have sustainable development if your justice system is in trouble.”

Yemen’s national unity government last week adopted a draft law giving President Ali Abdullah Saleh immunity from prosecution as part of a deal brokered by Gulf states and other international sponsors. The law would give amnesty to Saleh and his aides in “all government, civil, and military” departments covering all 33 years of his rule.

Human rights activists in Yemen and elsewhere have vehemently rejected the law as an affront to justice and an illustration of double standards held by the international community, allowing some leaders to commit human rights violations with impunity. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the law “would violate Yemen’s human rights obligations.”

In this podcast Paul Seils, ICTJ vice president, strongly underlines this point. “There are essentially a number of treaties in international law, to which Yemen has acceded or ratified, which require Yemen to investigate and prosecute gross violations of human rights. The proposed amnesty law is manifestly and uncontroversially in breach of those obligations.”

Seils discusses the cases where amnesties for former combatants have helped societies transition from conflict to a more stable and peaceful state. However, he contends, any attempt to provide amnesty for gross violations of human rights is a throwback to an outdated and discredited attempt to deal with transitions.

“The idea that you can simply amnesty away the past, provide for official amnesia, and guarantee official impunity, is unacceptable in the current state of international law and international relations.”

In an effort to advance the dialogue on ensuring accountability for crimes against humanity and genocide, ICTJ has launched a special podcast series on complementarity—a principle placing responsibility for prosecution of serious crimes at the national level. At the recent high-level meeting held at the Greentree estate in New York, ICTJ spoke with some of the leading global voices on justice.

The first podcast included questions addressing the way forward in complementarity, and what the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and development agencies should be in pursuing accountability for mass atrocity at the national level.

For the second podcast we spoke with Tarik El Tumi, program director for the Libyan NGO Lawyers for Justice, about the capacity of the Libyan judiciary to address the legacies of the Gaddafi dictatorship and the role the ICC can play in facilitating this process.

Because of the manner in which it was used during the dictatorship, Libyans have lost trust and confidence in the judiciary, El Tumi said. Additionally, lack of vocational training under the regime has left much of the legal sector without basic skills, such as interviewing a victim or torture or someone who has allegedly committed an atrocity.

However, he asserted, "With the right technical assistance and the right initiatives for capacity building from the international community—from the ICC, the UN, and the international development community—as well as from Libyan lawyers from the diaspora, we can help them develop their capacity in such a way as to meet the challenges of post-revolutionary Libya."

Addressing the role of the ICC in post-dictatorship Libya, El Tumi spoke directly to the importance of employing the complementarity principle:

"The role of the ICC is to assess the willingness and ability of the Libyan judiciary to prosecute Saif [al-Islam Gaddafi] and Abdullah Senussi*," he said. "The willingness is undoubtedly there. In the instance that there is a lack of ability, the ICC's role could very well be to mobilize on the ground to support the Libyan judiciary's ability to prosecute."

In an effort to promote dialogue on advancing accountability for crimes against humanity and genocide, ICTJ has launched a special podcast series on complementarity. The complementarity principle, enshrined in the Rome Statue, asserts that accountability for mass atrocity can only be achieved if national judicial systems are fully involved in the process, cooperating with other justice mechanisms such as reparations programs, institutional reform, and truth-seeking. In accordance with this notion, the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and prosecutes serious crimes only where states are unwilling or genuinely unable to do so.

The recent meeting at Greentree, hailed as a major step in turning complementarity from policy into practice, gathered some of the leading experts in the international justice, national justice practitioners, civil society representatives, international policymakers, and development actors. Their goal was to examine relevant experiences and practices and seek concrete measures to implement complementarity.

Utilizing this wealth of knowledge and experience, we spoke to some of leading global voices on justice in conversations that form our new series. In the first podcast we ask what the way forward in implementing complementarity is, and what the role of the ICC and development agencies should be.

Our guests are Phakiso Mochochoko, director of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division of the ICC; Tarik El-Tumi, program director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya; Judge Dan Akiiki-Kiiza, head of the International Crimes Division of the High Court of Uganda; Binta Mansaray, registrar of the Special Court in Sierra Leone; Ambassador Thomas Winkler, undersecretary for legal affairs of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Heidy Rombouts, program director of GIZ Program for Social Justice, Reconciliation and National Cohesion in Kenya.

If the international community is seriously committed to fighting impunity for mass atrocity, national courts in the countries where such crimes have been committed must be at the frontline. International development actors are crucial to making this possible.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established to prosecute crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes in situations where states are genuinely unable or unwilling to do so. The primary responsibility to prosecute these crimes—according to the Rome Statute which established the ICC in 1998—rests with states, a concept referred to as the complementarity principle.

Under this principle the ICC is a court of last resort, complementing the efforts of national judicial systems. But legal systems facing the task of prosecuting mass violations have often been devastated by the same conflict or period of authoritarian rule that gave rise to such violations in the first place. Some states also have in place legal barriers to ending impunity for these crimes—amnesties, immunities, pardons.

Even when it succeeds in bringing to justice those most responsible, the ICC cannot fill the impunity gap in situations where there are hundreds or thousands of perpetrators. National judicial structures must be afforded the support necessary to enable them to better bear the burden of ending impunity. The successful implementation of complementarity requires the cooperation of both the international justice sector and development actors, those involved in supporting states recovering from conflict and authoritarianism.

Following the first Rome Statute Review Conference held last year in Kampala, ICTJ organized a high-level meeting of international justice actors, development practitioners, and national rule of law actors to foster political support for complementarity and explore how the concept can be implemented.

Recognized as vital step in the process towards putting the concept into practice, ICTJ, together with the United Nations Development Program and with the support from the governments of Denmark and South Africa, is holding a second meeting to continue this conversation on December 8–9 at the Greentree Estate in New York. The objectives of this meeting are to analyze the progress made on complementarity, discuss national judicial capacity-building to make complementarity work in practice, and foster co-ownership and coordination of the process by the development and rule of law sectors.

In this podcast, ICTJ president David Tolbert highlights the importance of discussion and cooperation between the international justice community and development actors in implementing complementarity, the primary purpose of this second Greentree meeting.

“We are trying to get the dialogue started between these two groups,” Tolbert says, “so that when serious crimes are committed, the funding, strategies, expertise goes not just to capacity-building of the general judicial system, but also to ensure that serious crimes are addressed.”

In the past three decades, Afghanistan’s people have endured the devastating impact of violence through foreign invasion, civil war, and insurgency. Though the volatile political situation in the country is a hot-button issue of international prominence, victims of the conflict have largely been excluded from the war discourse.

In this podcast, ICTJ speaks with Hadi Marifat, founder of the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO). ICTJ, AHRDO and local Afghan organizations are working together on an innovative arts-based approach to discussing Afghanistan’s conflict and transitional justice issues at the grassroots level. Community theater provides a space for victims of war to connect with one another and share their experiences.

Feedback from victims shows the powerful impact of the project. Marifat describes one particularly compelling testimonial from a woman who had lost five family members during the war. “Hadi, I’m not going to cry any more. I stopped crying. And I’m going to change my tears into energy.” This inspiring quote later became the theme of a theater project, entitled “Tears to Energy.”

Though the political context of this approach is unique to Afghanistan, Mairfat believes that using theater can be a viable technique to reach victims in other societies emerging from conflict.

“A lot of people thought it wouldn’t work because the idea is foreign. But given the history of oral expressions that we have in the country, people really took to theater, and they really liked it. I hope that this experience could be also transformed and used in other post-conflict situations in any other countries.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council recently established a mandate for a Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence. The decision to create this position received widespread support among the UN member states, with 75 states co-sponsoring the resolution.

In this podcast Caitlin Reiger, director of international policy relations at ICTJ, discusses the objectives, qualities, and implications of this mandate on the field of transitional justice.

In the conflicts of today, it is often more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier. Women comprise a vast majority of civilian victims, and rape and violence specifically targeting women has become a systematic weapon of warfare and ethnic cleansing. Yet women are also emerging as critical actors in negotiations to end conflict and the brokering of lasting peace.

On October 11, PBS will launch the five-part series "Women, War & Peace," focusing the dialogue about conflict and security on the roles women play both as targets of violence and key partners in the peace process. The episodes of the series profile the stories of women in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Colombia and Liberia, closing with interviews with leading thinkers, policymakers and survivors of conflict that pose a challenge to the idea that war and peace are men's domain.

ICTJ sat down with two of the three producers of Women, War & Peace, Pamela Hogan and Gini Reticker, to discuss insights from the upcoming series, why women have become primary targets of violence, how to promote women's vital role in the peace process, and what lessons can be taken from the stories of incredible bravery and strength exhibited by the women profiled in the series.