PRESS RELEASE
Survivors of genocide visited IFIMES
LJUBLJANA, 13 November 2015 – Director of the International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) Zijad Bećirović and Vice-President of the IFIMES Advisory Board Prof. Dr.Ernest Petrič received Munira Subašić, President of the Mothers of Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves Association, and Murat Tahirović, President of the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide.
The IFIMES International Institute constantly monitors and analyses events related to severe violations of international humanitarian law, especially within the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In this context IFIMES has been offering support to international and national judicial authorities in the prosecution of all crimes committed in the territory of former Yugoslavia, as well as to victims of those crimes in the implementation of international legal norms that regulate victims' rights. Once again IFIMES stressed its support to ICTY and to the Residual Mechanism as ICTY's legal successor and recalled joint aspirations and efforts to conclude the work of those institutions in line with the highest international legal standards and to avoid any further non-principled actions and decisions that have marked the cessation of that international criminal tribunal. Moreover it is of key importance that after 2017 ICTY continues its work in Sarajevo regarding the cases it has already confirmed and identified according to the Rome Rules of the Road and which have been submitted to the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina but not processed yet.
IFIMES representatives and the visitors also expressed their support to structured dialogue on justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina that is organised under the auspices of the international community and stressed the need to intensify the prosecution of war criminals in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This calls for an urgent change of the National Strategy for War Crimes Processing in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the assistance and support of the international community and ICTY.
Prof. Dr. Ernest Petrič, the incumbent member and former Chairman of the UN International Law Commission (ILC) and until recently President of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia, expressed his support to the efforts to establish the truth and to ensure justice which will lead to reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region.To this end, it would be important to continue the work of ICTY in Sarajevo after 2017 on cases that were already confirmed and identified according to the Rome Rules of the Road.
Ljubljana, 13 November 2015
