David Chandler [Professor of International Relations, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster]: "Nearly two decades after its establishment, in 1993, the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) plans to close by the beginning of 2012 and is slowly winding down. In the process, the ICTY is transferring the task of pursuing prosecutions arising from the 1992-1995 Bosnian war to the domestic Bosnian courts, with the recently established Bosnian War Crimes Chamber (WCC) playing a central role.

In this context, international commentators have stressed that it is now up to Bosnians themselves to ensure that their war criminals are held to account. It is argued [pdf file] that by bringing justice closer to the people of Bosnia the domestic judicial process will assist much more in the task of bringing reconciliation. There is little doubting the activism of the Bosnian courts, evidenced by the Bosnian Prosecutor's announcement, on January 8, 2009, that 8 former Serb military police were being indicted for war crimes committed on Mount Vlašić in August 1992. The men are alleged to have taken part in the massacre of over 200 Bosniak and Croat men, throwing their bodies into the deep ravine.

However, Bosnian dissatisfaction with the judicial approach to war crimes has little to do with whether alleged war criminals are pursued by the ICTY or the domestic WCC. The attempt to apply the law to atrocities committed in the Bosnian war looks set to continue to lead to frustration, disappointment and division. Understanding civil conflict as a series of war crimes neither helps reconciliation nor the development of a collective sense of justice. Human Rights Watch argues that, "There are literally thousands of war crimes cases emanating from the conflict, which have not yet been addressed…the criminal justice system as a whole – is not in a position to handle all of these cases." For families who lost relatives and loved ones to the war, the special recognition of some deaths as war crimes and not others is seen as a slight to their own suffering.

It is clear that the ICTY and the WCC can only ever be selective in their judgments, and that legal approaches to war crimes can never include every act of war or recognise every victim. Through its external pressure, the international community has forced Bosnian discourse to become mired in a competition over claims to recognition of victim status – claims which can never be satisfied and can only be divisive. Postwar reconciliation has little to do with legal judgments and much more to do with the practice of getting on with life and developing shared interests in the present. The high international judicial profile given to the Bosnian war has become a major barrier to Bosnian people focusing on their shared future, rather than their divided past."