The Development of International Humanitarian Law by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Christopher Greenwood 1 I. Introduction 1997 may well have been a turning point for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. For the first three years of its exis- tence, the Tribunal, which was established by the Security Council in 1993, 2 had been surrounded by doubts that it could play an effective part in bringing to justice those responsible for the appalling violations of humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia, let alone contribute to the maintenance of international peace — the ostensible reason for its crea- tion. 3 Those doubts stemmed, for the most part, from the perceived inability of the Tribunal to enforce its will. Although the Prosecutor had issued indictments against numerous defendants, including the former political and military leaders of the Bosnian Serbs, by the end of the Tribunal's third year of operation, only seven defendants were actually in custody 4 and the Tribunal had spent much of the year to 31 July 1996 holding proceedings, under Rule 61 of its Rules of Procedures, in respect of defendants who were still at liberty. 5 As Judge Sidhwa explained, this procedure was basically an apology for the Tribunal's helplessness in not 1 The author acknowledges with gratitude the assistance of Mr. Christoph Safferling, LL.M, in undertaking some of the research for this article. The responsibility for any errors remains that of the author alone. 2 See S/RES/827 (1993) of 25 May 1993. 3 See Part II, below. 4 Report of the President to the United Nations General Assembly, Doc. A/51/292; S/l996/665, para. 8. 5 See below, p. 112.
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