Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law from Sarajevo is a public scientific institution engaged in analysis of crimes against peace, crime of genocide, and other grave breaches of international law from the historical, legal, sociological, criminology, economic, demographic, psychological, political, cultural, medical, environmental, and other aspects of relevance for the complete research of crimes.

The Institute was established on 4 September 1992 based on Law Decree of the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, No. 16/92), ratified at the Parliament of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 1 June 1994 (Official Gazette of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, No. 13/94). The Seat of the Institute is in Sarajevo. The Institute is a member of the Sarajevo University.

The focus of the Institute is particularly on research of:

• planning, preparation, commencement, and/or conducting the aggressor war or the war which violates international covenants, agreements, guarantees or participation in a common plan or conspiracy in perpetration of one of the cited actions;
• violation of war laws and customs of war; murder, torture or taking civilians from the occupied territory or to the occupied territory to a forced labor and any other reason; killing or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or dying persons; killing of hostages; looting of public or private property; deliberate destruction of towns and villages or wanton plundering not justified by necessary military needs;
• genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes against civilians; war crimes against the injured or ill persons; war crimes against prisoner of war; organizing of groups to incite the commission of crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes; unlawful killing and inflicting injuries of enemy soldiers; unlawful taking of belongings from the killed persons or those injured at the battlefield; use of unlawful combat means; inflicting injuries to the parliamentary; cruel treatment with the injured, sick and prisoners of war; unjustified delay of repatriation of prisoners of war; destruction of cultural and historical monuments; inciting to aggressor war; abuse of international signs; racial and other discrimination; enslavement and transport of enslaved persons; international terrorism; endangering of people under international protection; taking hostages, and other grave breaches of the rules of international law.

With this in mind, the Institute specially:

• defines the place and time of crime;
• defines the circumstances under which the crime was committed;
• defines categories, status and number of victims, forms of crimes and mode of commission of crime;
• tries, within the framework of its scientific capacities, to identify ideologists, organizers, inciters, aids and abettors, associates, order issuing authorities, and perpetrators;
• creates the records of destroyed or damaged cultural monuments, economic and other facilities and their approximate values of damage;
• collects, arranges and keeps the documentation on crimes;
• delivers the competent state authorities proposals with documentation for criminal prosecution; publicizes the study results along with the documentation, even in several languages, if needed.

The Institute particularly works on:

• conceptualization and preparation of scientific projects, serving as basis for the organization and execution of study of crimes against humanity and international law;
• permanent and continuous application of existing scientific methods and methods for collection of data during the research, and verifies its reliability in the process of acquiring knowledge, thus verifying its adequacy in relation to the subject of research, which clearly contributes to the function of development of methodology of studying crimes against humanity and international law;
• providing scientific and professional assistance to researchers in this field;
• establishing cooperation with the scientific and professional institutions in the country and abroad;
• publishing scientific papers;
• the organization of conferences, counseling, discussion, and lectures on some of the professional matters falling under the scope of work of the Institute and alike activities;
• participation at conferences, counseling, discussions, and lectures in the country and abroad;
• securing material resources for continued work, collection of data on crimes against humanity and international law, publishing, technical items and other needs of the Institute.

For the efficient implementation of researching and other supporting activities, the Institute organized following units:

• for scientific and researching activity;
• for collection of facts and empirical records on crimes;
• for documentation and analysis (archive, data processing, library, publishing);
• for administrative, legal and financial tasks.

The Institute has a status of a legal person.

The Institute may organize its units as Centers in other places in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad.

The records, available to the Institute, are also available to the public under the Rules of the Institute.

State authorities, institutions, companies, and other legal persons and citizens shall provide the Institute with information and records of interest for the Institute, upon a request by the Institute.

The Institute cooperates with legal and natural persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad.

The management bodies, as well as professional bodies in the Institute are: Management Board, Director, and Scientific Council.

Management board members are:

• Prof. Dr. Ismet Dizdarević, Chair
• Matija Lapenda, member
• Rasim Halilagić M.A., member
• Dr. Bećir Macić, member

Scientific Council members are:

• Prof. dr Smail Čekić, Chair
• Dr. Bećir Macić, member
• Doc. Dr. Rasim Muratović, member
• Dr. Fikret Bečirović, member
• Sabahudin Šarić M.A., member.

Basic general act of the Institute are the Rules.

The Founder gives approval for the Rules of the Institute and adopts the Report on the work of the Institute.

Rules of the Institute, in addition to the those prescribed in the Law Decree on Institutions, contain special provisions on: relation between the Institute and state authorities, relevant international organizations, legal and physical persons, terms under which the Institute records shall be made public and the mode of publishing its results, appointments in the Scientific Council, and other.

The Ministry of education, science, culture, and sports shall be responsible for the oversight over the Institute.

Staff, space, equipment, and resources

Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law of the Sarajevo University was established and it began functioning under the difficult conditions of the aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Under those circumstances, the institution faced very serious issues related to the staff, space, equipment, and financial resources. In that period, there were not enough competent scholars of crimes against humanity and international law in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Thus, at the beginning of its work the Institute faced a serious shortage of staff, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. With this, the Institute was brought to a situation to pay special attention to identifying a certain number of scholars, of appropriate profile, skills, and features. After all, the Institute would deal with very complex and sensitive social occurrences, problems and subjects of research, which required not only the competent researchers, but also necessary human virtues such as honesty – human and scientific, accountability, good intentions, good faith, understanding, respect, tolerance, punctuality, truthfulness, precision, dignity and moral and human qualities and values that would allow the distinction between good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, truth and lie. In other words, the focus was on the ethics of the researcher, in addition to accountability.

Working on those and other issues related to the problem of scientific staff, the Institute primarily tried, in accordance with the applicable laws, to ensure the required number of the scientific staff who were additionally trained and who worked on their personal education. It is necessary to say this because the aggression and the war are the most complex social occurrences resulting in enormously large number of human victims and the destruction of property, unfortunately accompanied by a vast number of crimes, including genocide, especially against civilians. Thus, these researchers need to have very specific skills, which cannot be obtained only through a formal education within one science or one discipline, but through the education and skills obtained in various sciences and disciplines that require the method of induction, synthesis and integration into the foundation of a interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to a research. The original composition was four people, two of which in title of PhD and two in M.A. in social sciences. The specifics of the subject of research lies in the fact that the scholars were the victims themselves, and that was the reason why the Institute needed to hire some scholars among those who worked at the Sarajevo University, who were specialists in their disciplines. The Institute hired those specialists on a permanent or temporary basis depending on the nature and character of the occurrence and the nature of the subject of research.

After about 15 years, the Institute managed to formulate a clear picture on the required staff and profile of the staff, and the Institute has a clear vision of the development strategy depending on the subject of investigation and research, the extent duration and intensity, and the special attention to paid to the identification of young scholars who work on the individual projects, thus attaining necessary skills. The practice in research is a component of education of the young scholars – who get the master’s or doctoral degree in studying holocaust, genocide and other forms of crimes against humanity and international law.

There are 26 fulltime employees in the Institute, four of which have PhD and four M.A. in social sciences, then 4 professional associates – scholars, 6 with B.A. degree, and one has a Junior College degree, 4 have secondary education degree, there are two interns and one employee with technical skills.

The structure of permanent external associates contains 5 doctors and 5 scholars with master’s degree.

The temporary external associates are numerous affirmed scholars, who join the Institute on the temporary basis for the need of specific studies.

The special focus is on the network of field investigators who conduct the interviews and questionnaires for the needs of empirical studies, and their number varies depending on the nature and extent of research. Sometimes a study requires dozens and sometimes even hundreds of field investigators. The subject of research, space, time, equipment and funds, prior experience determine the number of field investigators. And yet, every new study requires a briefing to be organized with all of them.

Of course, it is worth mentioning that in addition to numerous national scholars, the Institute hires the international experts, and we would like to mention one of them: a doyen of holocaust and genocide scholar, the late Prof. Dr. Eric Markusen.

In addition to the most complex and most important problems, such as the problem of hiring the competent staff, the Institute has had apparent problems with the space, equipment, and financial resources. In the period 1992-1998, the Institute was temporarily quartered in the premises of the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, then within the School of Architecture of the Sarajevo University. In the period 1998-2007, the Institute was temporarily quartered within the premises of the Stari Grad Municipality. Thanks to the Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Government, the Institute got its own space in 2007. The building is currently under the renovation, and it will serve all the purposes of the scientific work by the Institute.

The refurbishment of this building requires also the procurement of equipment – IT and office equipment, modern library and archive for the Institute.

Financial resources for the basic activity are secured by the founder – the Assembly and the Government of the Canton Sarajevo, which also secure some funds for the Sarajevo University, whose one of the units the Institute is. Considering the fact that the basic Institute activity is articulated though the study of holocaust, genocide and other forms of crimes against humanity and international law, and the Institute therefore does not have other alternatives to secure other additional funds, which may be required for specific empirical studies due to the extent, duration, diversification and the requirement of a complete observation, it is necessary that the founder secures other additional funds to be used for these projects.

Being aware that we live in times in which we have to determine the truth and yet look into the future, free of burdening past, it is perhaps necessary to engage other social elements as well that would secure additional funds for the projects they envisage. Also, the issue of funds is unfortunately misused by some associations that represent themselves as competent researching institutions, and in fact they are quasi researchers and they manipulate the public by disclosing their truth to the national and international public. Their truth does not correspond with the reality and it may only serve the daily politics purposes.

Being very much aware of these facts, the Institute, the founder and some other state authorities need to secure additional funds, especially for the empirical studies which will determine the truth by applying the scientific methodology, which will ultimately be presented to the national and international, scientific, professional and general public.

Other activities

Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law of the Sarajevo University together with all of its associates who participated in many national and international Conferences, who in that way contributed to the quality of the results by the national and international legal and other institutions that deal with the issues of human rights and freedoms and the problems relative to their implementation. This is definitely closely related to the basic activity of the Institute.

Considering that these are numerous, versatile, complex, independent and common activities of the Institute, we shall mention only some of them, since it is not easy to mention them all. The Institute associates worked on the drafting of People’s application (Actio popularis) against Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Jasushi Akashi, adopted at the meeting of the representatives of victims of aggression and genocide in September 1995 in Sarajevo. This document was sent to the UN General Assembly and Security Council, all the governments members of the UN, ICTY in The Hague, Permanent Tribunal of Peoples in Rome and the Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia – Bern.^[1]

The Institute participated in drafting of the People’s application (Actio popularis) against Slobodan Milošević, which was in cooperation with the Headquarters for Genocide and Victims of War of the Croatian Victims Society (Zagreb), adopted in Zagreb on 10 November 1995. The application was filed against Slobodan Milošević, because, as stated, “since his coming to power he started with the preparations for war and violence, and started the aggressive wars against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina”, and it is demanded “that the Judge Richard Goldstone, Chief Prosecutor of ICTY opens an investigation and brings the Indictment and issues the arrest warrant after Slobodan Milošević, a big war criminal”.^[2]

The Institute representatives participated with their papers at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, organized by Ludvig Bolcman – Institute for Human Rights, and the Conference on genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina (held on 16-20 April 1993 in New York). The Institute gave its contribution to the successful work of the nongovernmental Permanent People’s Tribunal, the successor of the famous Russell’s Court in Rome, which held in 1995 two session on the crimes committed in the territory of former Yugoslavia, or better to say public trials in Bern (17-20 February 1995) and Barcelona (7-11 December 1995).

In the Permanent People’s Tribunal Judgment of 11 December 1995, which is mainly based on the results obtained by the Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, found, inter alia, that “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) is responsible for (..) aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina…”. This important document indicated the responsibility of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for “intervening with the affairs under the competence of internal jurisdiction of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Croatia, crime of genocide against Muslim population in Bosnia”. Also, the Judgment included that “the self-proclaimed Republic of Bosnian Serbs was responsible for (…) crime of genocide against the Muslim population in Bosnia”. According to that Judgment, the Republic of Croatia is responsible for “Aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and crime of genocide against Muslim population in Bosnia”, and as for the collaborators of Croatia in Bosnia and Herzegovina “self-proclaimed Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia is responsible for (…) crime of genocide against Muslim population in Bosnia”.^[3]

The Institute organizes the lectures for the students of the Sarajevo University (different departments and years) on the scientific-theoretical and other issues, questions, results of the studies on holocaust, genocide and other forms of crimes against humanity and international law. These lectures require the engagement of professors and scholars of various disciplines, which suggests the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach in studying these important social phenomena. Moreover, to get a wider knowledge on the extent of holocaust and genocide, and get the image of all forms of crimes against humanity and international law, the Institute ensured that the victims of these crimes take part in these lectures.

The integral part, of these lectures, is practical presentation, which allows the student, among other things, to visit the important sites of mass crimes.

^[1] GENOCIDE IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 1991-1995 Conference proceedings from the International Congress for Documenting Genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1991-1995, held in Bonn on 31 August to 4 September 1995, Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, Sarajevo 1997, pages 747-753.

^[2] Ibid, pages 763-764.

^[3] Ibid, pages 755-761