peacefare.net

The R word in practice

Natasa Kandic yesterday sent around a policy brief on How the European Union Can Contribute to Reconciliation of Post-Yugoslav Countries. It starts with a review of judicial proceedings in the region and continues on to this account of RECOM, an indigenous effort at non-judicial reconciliation that merits more attention than it has gotten. So I have taken the liberty of publishing that part of the policy brief here:

An Extrajudicial Fact-Finding and Truth-Telling
Body (RECOM)

The regional intergovernmental commission for the establishment of the facts about victims and the circumstances of their death (RECOM), should by its seal prevent the political manipulations and interpretations that jeopardize connectivity and cooperation. This would reduce room for lies, denial, and the production of nationalist narratives about the wars, and contribute to the humanization of the other, the stability and security of the region and the sustainability of economic cooperation, and at the same time enable reforms of educational programs in those parts concerning recent history.

In 2008, non-governmental organizations from the former Yugoslavia established the Coalition for RECOM, which today includes more than 2,100 organizations and individuals and advocates the establishment of a Regional Commission for the Establishment of the Facts on War Crimes and Other Serious Violations of Human Rights Committed in the Territory the Former Yugoslavia (RECOM). The initiative for the establishment of the Commission has been supported by the signatures of over 580,000 citizens from the entire region, and, following a broadly inclusive, four-year consultation process (during which 128 debates were held with 6,700 representatives of civil society), the goals, tasks, competence, duration and procedures of the future intergovernmental commission have been formulated. Starting from this foundation, the final version of the Draft Statute of RECOM was agreed in 2014 by the Special Envoys of the Presidents of Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia, and the Bosniak and Croat members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the meantime, two new members of the Presidency (2014) were elected in BiH, with which the Coalition for RECOM has not yet managed to hold a meeting, while the Bosniak Presidency member has continued to support the establishment of RECOM. A new President was elected in Croatia in 2015 who believes that support for the establishment of RECOM is outside the scope of the competence of the President. In this situation, in which some newly elected politicians have ceased to support civil initiatives that enjoyed the support of their predecessors, the Coalition for RECOM has created a new strategy, which starts from the affirmation of the Berlin Process as being an appropriate platform for the agreement of post-Yugoslav leaders to launch an intergovernmental project for reconciliation. The first step is to be the signing of the Agreement on the Establishment of RECOM at the Berlin Process Summit in London in July 2018, by which the post-Yugoslav countries’ Prime Ministers, whose support would remain unchangeable (independent of elections), would demonstrate the willingness of their states to initiate procedures for the establishment of RECOM, in accordance with Article 48 of the Draft Statute. An equally important step is to re-engage Croatia in the RECOM process, in which it played a leading role until the beginning of 2015.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The progress in the reconciliation of post-Yugoslav countries requires the following:

1. Strengthening of the domestic judiciaries and their cooperation in the prosecution of war crimes:
– Support for the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) becoming the engine of regional cooperation in the prosecution of war crimes – to assist in the creation of a regional prosecutorial strategy, to provide easier access to evidence and facts established before the ICTY, and to provide expert support in investigations and in the preparation of indictments against individuals who participated in the planning of mass crimes but today hold positions that protect them from criminal responsibility.
– Resolving bilateral disputes between Serbia and Croatia by signing a bilateral agreement on the prosecution of war crimes, according to which the trials would be held on the basis of the defendant’s domicile, thus in practice eliminating the possible harmful consequences of the application of the universal jurisdiction principle contained in the law of the Republic of Serbia and the Croatian Law on the invalidity of legal acts produced in Serbia.
– The relinquishment by the BiH Presidency of the principle of territorial jurisdiction and acceptance of the standard whereby each state holds trials of its citizens, since this approach contributes the most to critical re-examination within the society and facing its own responsibility towards others.

2. Signing a political agreement by which the post-Yugoslav countries will undertake to create the conditions for the establishment of RECOM within a reasonable time frame:
– Signing of the agreement under the auspices of the Berlin Process at the London Summit in July 2018. The agreement should include the possibility of later accession, as well as an invitation to the other countries in this regard.
– Increasing the visibility of the objectives and tasks of the future Commission, especially the importance of the list of war victims in the context of the humanization of the victims and the public recognition of all 130,000 victims.

3. The action plan of the European Commission’s Western Balkans Strategy for a credible enlargement perspective should provide for explicit measures:
– To support the establishment and operation of the Regional Commission for the establishment of facts on war crimes and other serious human rights violations in the territory of the former SFRY in the period from 1 January 1991 to 31 December 2001 (RECOM), and to define the establishment and commencement of the work of this commission by the end of 2019 as an indicator of progress in the process of reconciliation;
– To support the cooperation of the domestic prosecutors’ offices with the MICT in the creation and implementation of the regional prosecutorial strategy, and define the development of the strategy by mid-2019 as an indicator of progress in establishing the rule of law and contribution to the reconciliation process.

4. The European Parliament should provide strong support to reconciliation in the region
through a resolution that would support the establishment and operation of the
regional intergovernmental commission – RECOM.

5. The European Commission and the European Parliament should organize a donor conference and the establishment of the Post-Yugoslav Reconciliation Fund, which would finance regional projects focusing on peace-building and common issues and include all post-Yugoslav countries.