Transitional justice and reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Whose memories, whose justice?

Abstract

This paper shows that transitional justice initiatives such as the trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Commission for Srebrenica and the establishment of accurate statistics on deaths during the conflict have had only a limited impact on inter-group reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Popular attitudes towards these initiatives are captured in surveys conducted in 2005 and 2010. The results are not surprising given that the absence, due to the level of external regulation and control, of a politics of post-Dayton state-building means that domestic politics takes place in an arena of dealing with the past. The international community legitimised the three prevalent conflict narratives as a way of achieving a peace settlement in Dayton. These communal narratives were used in the peace-building phase by the local elites to defend concessions gained during negotiations and to oppose changes imposed by external supervisors of the Dayton Peace Accords. This has transformed the debate over the recent conflict from a transitional process of coming to terms with the past to a permanent state of affairs. This process precludes reconciliation in terms of mutual acknowledgment of suffering and a nuanced understanding of the causes and dynamics of the violent conflict.U ovom radu se pokazuje da inicijative u domenu tranzicione pravde, kao sto su sudjenja pred Medjunarodnim krivicnim sudom za bivsu Jugoslaviju i Drzavnim sudom Bosne i Hercegovine, Komisija za Srebrenicu i stvaranje tacne statisticke baze podataka o poginulima tokom sukoba imaju samo ograniceno dejstvo na pomirenje medju nacionalnim zajednicama u Bosni i Hercegovini. Stavovi javnosti prema tim inicijativama pokazuju se u anketama sprovedenim 2005. i 2010. godine. Rezultati ne iznenadjuju s obzirom na to da, zahvaljujuci visokom nivou spoljne regulacije i kontrole, izostaje politika postdejtonske izgradnje drzave, sto znaci da se domaca politika odvija u areni suocavanja s prosloscu. Medjunarodna zajednica je legitimisala tri preovladjujuca narativa o sukobu, kao nacin da se postigne mirovni sporazum u Dejtonu. Te narative, vezane za nacionalne zajednice, koristile su lokalne elite tokom faze izgradnje mira, kako bi odbranile usputke koje su postigle tokom pregovora i usprotivili se izmenama koje su nametale spoljne instance nadgledanja Dejtonskog mirovnog sporazuma. Na taj nacin debata o nedavnom konfliktu pretvorena je iz tranzicionog procesa suocavanja s prosloscu u trajno stanje stvari. Taj proces onemogucava pomirenje u smislu uzajamnog priznanja patnje i nijansiranog razumevanja uzroka i dinamike nasilnog sukoba.