Article

The International criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2006 : new developments in international humanitarian and criminal law

Frédéric P. Bostedt

• Chinese journal of international law, Vol. 6, no. 2, July 2007, p. 403-438

English

Photocopie

This article highlights the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia’s (ICTY) main developments in the areas of IHL and criminal law for the year 2006. The author discusses the key elements of the eight judgments rendered that year. One of the main developments from those judgments is the evolution of the law on superior and command responsibility through the Oric, Hadžihasanovic´and Kubura trial judgments. The ICTY held that a superior may be criminally liable if he knew or had reason to know that crimes were about to be committed by his subordinates. Where this is established, the onus is on the superior to establish that he took necessary and reasonable measures to stop the crimes from being committed. Another main development centers on criminal responsibility under the Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE) doctrine through the Krajišnik judgment. Here, the ICTY increased the burden of proof required to establish JCE, and held that individuals involved in JCE are only responsible for the crimes envisaged by the JCE if they are directly responsible for one of these crimes. [Summary by students at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (IHRP)]