OSCE Hopes Internationals Will Stay

“I hope the decision on the stay of international judges and prosecutors will either be made by the Office of the High Representative, OHR, or by the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina, through urgent procedure. Naturally, I would prefer the decision to be made by the Parliament, but it seems that nothing like that is even being prepared at this stage,” Justice Report is told by James Rodehaver, Chief of the Human Rights Section with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The exit strategy, prepared five years ago, foresees the departure of international judges and prosecutors from Bosnia and Herzegovina by the end of 2009. Beyond this date, those institutions would be staffed by local personnel only. Besides the fact that their employees would be citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this also means that the Court and Prosecution would entirely depend on the state budget.

Despite numerous calls for extending the mandates, in October this year the House of Peoples of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina failed to adopt the proposed law, which would have enabled the extension. As per the proposed law, foreign employees, working at the War Crimes Chamber, would have stayed in the country for two more years. At present, international staff members are working in the Organized Crime Section as well.

“Big progress has been made, but this is not sufficient. We have recently seen that there are many people who are trying to influence the activities conducted by the Court and the manner in which the judges and prosecutors are doing their jobs. Those people are trying to discredit the Court, in particular its work in the field of organized crime, but the work on war crimes is targeted more and more often,” Rodehaver said.

Rodehaver said that the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has made a lot of progress over the past five years.

“Part of the progress has been made thanks to the presence of the international personnel. They act like mentors, who help develop the regulations and implement best practice applied by other courts throughout the world,” he said.

Rodehaver added that the OSCE is looking forward to the time when international judges and prosecutors are no longer needed, but “we have still not reached” that level, he said.

“I consider the extension of their mandates for a limited period of time would constitute a key part of the activities on defining what still needs to be done in order to make sure that local staff members will be ready to deal with all cases without any fear or threats, once the mandate of international staff members has expired,” he said.