Since its establishment in 2003, the Public Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor (POWCP) of the Republic of Serbia has issued 106 indictments against individuals for crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Only 13 indictments filed include incidents of sexual violence, which indicates that in the previous practice of the domestic judiciary, sexual violence was rarely prosecuted, and when prosecuted it was most often considered as a war crime that occurs alongside murder and other physical violence. Considering the prevalence of rape and other forms of sexual violence in armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, it is clear that the domestic judiciary has not paid due attention to these crimes.
The prevalence of sexual violence was one of the reasons for the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), whose practice today represents a standard in prosecuting these crimes. More than a third of all those convicted before the ICTY have also been convicted of crimes of sexual violence. Nevertheless, although the work of the ICTY represents a milestone in the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence in war, the achievements of that court have not been significantly incorporated into the work of the domestic judiciary.
To date, no one has been prosecuted in Serbia for the sexual violence committed in Foča, although the statements of women raped in Foča, collected by researchers of the Humanitarian Law Center during 1993 in refugee camps in Serbia, Turkey and Macedonia, were the basis for initiating an investigation by the ICTY Prosecutor’s Office and prosecuting those responsible for these crimes. Some of the names of the potential perpetrators of these crimes in Foča and in other places in the former Yugoslavia are listed in the judgments of the Tribunal.
The analysis titled The Prosecution of Sexual Violence Crimes in Armed Conflicts before Courts in Serbia over the Past Two Decades, by Olivera Simić, Professor at Griffith University, Australia, is part of the ongoing work of the Humanitarian Law Center, an organization that monitors and analyzes all war crimes proceedings in Serbia. The need for an analysis that covers rape trials and other forms of sexual violence exclusively, stems from the belief that additional efforts need to be made to prosecute these crimes. The aim of the Analysis is to formulate recommendations through the study of previous practice that could contribute to more efficient processing of sexual violence, as well as improving the positions of victims and witnesses in these proceedings.
You can download the publication Sexual Violence in War – An Analysis of Court Proceedings in Serbia (2003-2024) here.
