UN World Court rejects preliminary Serbian objections in genocide case with Croatia

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, today rejected Serbian objections over questions of jurisdiction and admissibility in the genocide case brought against it by Croatia.

The case, first instituted in 1999 against the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) over the 1991-1995 Croatian-Serbian war, will now move on to its next stage – the Court’s consideration of Croatia’s case on its merits.

In its judgment, which is final, binding and without appeal, the ICJ – also known as the World Court – ruled on three preliminary objections submitted by Serbia challenging its own need to participate in the case, the Court’s jurisdiction and the absence of indicted people on its territory.

The Court decided that Serbia, as a successor of the FRY and the subsequent Republic of Serbia and Montenegro, could not claim that it was not a UN Member when Croatia filed its case, and thus not a party to the Statute of the Court.

Serbia also claimed that it was not itself a party to the Genocide Convention invoked by Croatia on the date that the case was filed in 2 July 1999. The ICJ rejected this, deciding that there was a continuous obligation of succession moving through the various reincarnations of the country up to the present Republic of Serbia.

In its second objection, Serbia maintained that claims based on acts and omissions prior to 27 April 1992, when the FRY came into being as the successor of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, are beyond the Court’s jurisdiction. The ICJ ruled that this objection did not have an exclusively preliminary character and would thus be examined along with the merits on the case.

The third objection concerned the possible presence of indicted persons on Serbian territory. Croatia accepts that this submission is now moot in so far as some indicted persons have been transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) but it insists that there are people who have not been submitted to trial either in Croatia or before the ICTY.

Serbia asserted that Croatia has not shown that there are currently persons charged with genocide, either by the ICTY or by Croatian courts, who are on Serbian territory or in its control.

The ICJ also rejected this as a preliminary objection, ruling that it will be a matter for the Court to determine when it examines Croatia’s claims on the merits.