Dealing with the Past in the Balkans, 2010.
Jelena Subotić’s starting point is to consider why the effects of transitional justice are so weak and why they fail to meet the goals of international norms. The paradox is obvious: although the goals of transitional justice are undoubtedly positive – to remove the harsh consequences of the crimes committed during the violent conflicts throughout the world, to enable society to heal and reconcile, to establish peace and justice for victims by punishing the perpetrators of crimes and to remove the conditions which would facilitate the repetition of violence and crime – the results are often merely the formal harmonization with international norms whilst they are essentially contrary to its aims. The fact that institutions of transitional justice have become so popular that the majority of countries recovering from armed conflict accept some of them, nothing changes the other important fact that every such country in its own way manages to manipulate those norms.
She notes that this phenomenon is a strange and disappointing consequence of complex international legal principles. The impression is made that she, as a person and as a researcher, is disappointed by the behaviour of the international community, as much by the formalization of obligations to transitional justice and as much as by the maximal expectations of the efficiency of transitional justice in its internal intention, to honestly accept universal norms of humanity on the worth of every life regardless of nationality, religion or without reference to the aggressor – victim framework. Why such profound normative goals are missed is the question that the author tackles in a minute comparative survey of the effects of transitional justice, in particular in the cases of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. (From the book forward by Vesna Pešić.)
