We Read the ICJ’s Genocide Judgment So You Don’t Have To

140. The Court accordingly concludes that, in respect of the contention that the Respondent was not, on the date of filing of the Application instituting proceedings, a State having the capacity to come before the Court under the Statute, the principle of res judicata precludes any reopening of the decision embodied in the 1996 Judgment. The Respondent has however also argued that the 1996 Judgment is not res judicata as to the further question whether the FRY was, at the time of institution of proceedings, a party to the Genocide Convention, and has sought to show that at that time it was not, and could not have been, such a party. The Court however considers that the reasons given above for holding that the 1996 Judgment settles the question of jurisdiction in this case with the force of res judicata are applicable a fortiori as regards this contention, since on this point the 1996 Judgment was quite specific, as it was not on the question of capacity to come before the Court. The Court does not therefore find it necessary to examine the argument of the Applicant that the failure of the Respondent to advance at the time the reasons why it now contends that it was not a party to the Genocide Convention might raise considerations of estoppel, or forum prorogatum (cf. paragraphs 85 and 101 above). The Court thus concludes that, as stated in the 1996 Judgment, it has jurisdiction, under Article IX of the Genocide Convention, to adjudicate upon the dispute brought before it by the Application filed on 20 March 1993. It follows from the above that the Court does not find it necessary to consider the questions, extensively addressed by the Parties, of the status of the Respondent under the Charter of the United Nations and the Statute of the Court, and its position in relation to the Genocide Convention at the time of the filing of the Application.

Court’s ruling on state’s obligation not to commit genocide

166. The Court next considers whether the Parties are also under an obligation, by virtue of the Convention, not to commit genocide themselves. It must be observed at the outset that such an obligation is not expressly imposed by the actual terms of the Convention. The Applicant has however advanced as its main argument that such an obligation is imposed by Article IX, which confers on the Court jurisdiction over disputes “including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III”. Since Article IX is essentially a jurisdictional provision, the Court considers that it should first ascertain whether the substantive obligation on States not to commit genocide may flow from the other provisions of the Convention. Under Article I the States parties are bound to prevent such an act, which it describes as “a crime under international law”, being committed. The Article does not expressis verbis require States to refrain from themselves committing genocide. However, in the view of the Court, taking into account the established purpose of the Convention, the effect of Article I is to prohibit States from themselves committing genocide. Such a prohibition follows, first, from the fact that the Article categorizes genocide as “a crime under international law”: by agreeing to such a categorization, the States parties must logically be undertaking not to commit the act so described. Secondly, it follows from the expressly stated obligation to prevent the commission of acts of genocide. That obligation requires the States parties, inter alia, to employ the means at their disposal, in circumstances to be described more specifically later in this Judgment, to prevent persons or groups not directly under their authority from committing an act of genocide or any of the other acts mentioned in Article III. It would be paradoxical if States were thus under an obligation to prevent, so far as within their power, commission of genocide by persons over whom they have a certain influence, but were not forbidden to commit such acts through their own organs, or persons over whom they have such firm control that their conduct is attributable to the State concerned under international law. In short, the obligation to prevent genocide necessarily implies the prohibition of the commission of genocide.

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179. Accordingly, having considered the various arguments, the Court affirms that the Contracting Parties are bound by the obligation under the Convention not to commit, through their organs or persons or groups whose conduct is attributable to them, genocide and the other acts enumerated in Article III. Thus if an organ of the State, or a person or group whose acts are legally attributable to the State, commits any of the acts proscribed by Article III of the Convention, the international responsibility of that State is incurred.

Responsibility for events at Srebrenica under Article III, paragraph (a),
of the Genocide Convention

413. In the light of the information available to it, the Court finds, as indicated above, that it has not been established that the massacres at Srebrenica were committed by persons or entities ranking as organs of the Respondent (see paragraph 395 above). It finds also that it has not been established that those massacres were committed on the instructions, or under the direction of organs of the Respondent State, nor that the Respondent exercised effective control over the operations in the course of which those massacres, which, as indicated in paragraph 297 above, constituted the crime of genocide, were perpetrated. The Applicant has not proved that instructions were issued by the federal authorities in Belgrade, or by any other organ of the FRY, to commit the massacres, still less that any such instructions were given with the specific intent (dolus specialis) characterizing the crime of genocide, which would have had to be present in order for the Respondent to be held responsible on this basis. All indications are to the contrary: that the decision to kill the adult male population of the Muslim community in Srebrenica was taken by some members of the VRS Main Staff, but without instructions from or effective control by the FRY. As for the killings committed by the “Scorpions” paramilitary militias, notably at Trnovo (paragraph 289 above), even if it were accepted that they were an element of the genocide committed in the Srebrenica area, which is not clearly established by the decisions thus far rendered by the ICTY (see, in particular, the Trial Chamber’s decision of 12 April 2006 in the Stanišić and Simatović case, IT-03-69), it has not been proved that they took place either on the instructions or under the control of organs of the FRY.

421. Before the Court turns to an examination of the facts, one further comment is required. It concerns the link between the specific intent (dolus specialis) which characterizes the crime of genocide and the motives which inspire the actions of an accomplice (meaning a person providing aid or assistance to the direct perpetrators of the crime): the question arises whether complicity presupposes that the accomplice shares the specific intent (dolus specialis) of the principal perpetrator. But whatever the reply to this question, there is no doubt that the conduct of an organ or a person furnishing aid or assistance to a perpetrator of the crime of genocide cannot be treated as complicity in genocide unless at the least that organ or person acted knowingly, that is to say, in particular, was aware of the specific intent (dolus specialis) of the principal perpetrator. If that condition is not fulfilled, that is sufficient to exclude categorization as complicity. The Court will thus first consider whether this latter condition is met in the present case. It is only if it replies to that question of fact in the affirmative that it will need to determine the legal point referred to
above.

422. The Court is not convinced by the evidence furnished by the Applicant that the above conditions were met. Undoubtedly, the quite substantial aid of a political, military and financial nature provided by the FRY to the Republika Srpska and the VRS, beginning long before the tragic events of Srebrenica, continued during those events. There is thus little doubt that the atrocities in Srebrenica were committed, at least in part, with the resources which the perpetrators of those acts possessed as a result of the general policy of aid and assistance pursued towards them by the FRY.

However, the sole task of the Court is to establish the legal responsibility of the Respondent, a responsibility which is subject to very specific conditions. One of those conditions is not fulfilled, because it is not established beyond any doubt in the argument between the Parties whether the authorities of the FRY supplied ⎯ and continued to supply ⎯ the VRS leaders who decided upon and carried out those acts of genocide with their aid and assistance, at a time when those authorities were clearly aware that genocide was about to take place or was under way; in other words that not only were massacres about to be carried out or already under way, but that their perpetrators had the specific intent characterizing genocide, namely, the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a human group, as such.

423. A point which is clearly decisive in this connection is that it was not conclusively shown that the decision to eliminate physically the adult male population of the Muslim community from Srebrenica was brought to the attention of the Belgrade authorities when it was taken; the Court has found (paragraph 295 above) that that decision was taken shortly before it was actually carried out, a process which took a very short time (essentially between 13 and 16 July 1995), despite the exceptionally high number of victims. It has therefore not been conclusively established that, at the crucial time, the FRY supplied aid to the perpetrators of the genocide in full awareness that the aid supplied would be used to commit genocide.

424. The Court concludes from the above that the international responsibility of the Respondent is not engaged for acts of complicity in genocide mentioned in Article III, paragraph (e), of the Convention. In the light of this finding, and of the findings above relating to the other paragraphs of Article III, the international responsibility of the Respondent is not engaged under Article III as a whole.

Obligation to Prevent Genocide

438. In view of their undeniable influence and of the information, voicing serious concern, in their possession, the Yugoslav federal authorities should, in the view of the Court, have made the best efforts within their power to try and prevent the tragic events then taking shape, whose scale, though it could not have been foreseen with certainty, might at least have been surmised. The FRY leadership, and President Milošević above all, were fully aware of the climate of deep-seated hatred which reigned between the Bosnian Serbs and the Muslims in the Srebrenica region. As the Court has noted in paragraph 423 above, it has not been shown that the decision to eliminate physically the whole of the adult male population of the Muslim community of Srebrenica was brought to the attention of the Belgrade authorities. Nevertheless, given all the international concern about what looked likely to happen at Srebrenica, given Milošević’s own observations to Mladić, which made it clear that the dangers were known and that these dangers seemed to be of an order that could suggest intent to commit genocide, unless brought under control, it must have been clear that there. was a serious risk of genocide in Srebrenica. Yet the Respondent has not shown that it took any initiative to prevent what happened, or any action on its part to avert the atrocities which were committed. It must therefore be concluded that the organs of the Respondent did nothing to prevent the Srebrenica massacres, claiming that they were powerless to do so, which hardly tallies with their known influence over the VRS. As indicated above, for a State to be held responsible for breaching its obligation of prevention, it does not need to be proven that the State concerned definitely had the power to prevent the genocide; it is sufficient that it had the means to do so and that it manifestly refrained from using them.

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449. It therefore appears to the Court sufficiently established that the Respondent failed in its duty to co-operate fully with the ICTY. This failure constitutes a violation by the Respondent of its duties as a party to the Dayton Agreement, and as a Member of the United Nations, and accordingly a violation of its obligations under Article VI of the Genocide Convention. The Court is of course without jurisdiction in the present case to declare that the Respondent has breached any obligations other than those under the Convention. But as the Court has jurisdiction to declare a breach of Article VI insofar as it obliges States to co-operate with the “international penal tribunal”, the Court may find for that purpose that the requirements for the existence of such a breach have been met. One of those requirements is that the State whose responsibility is in issue must have “accepted [the] jurisdiction” of that “international penal tribunal”; the Court thus finds that the Respondent was under a duty to co-operate with the tribunal concerned pursuant to international instruments other than the Convention, and failed in that duty. On this point, the Applicant’s submissions relating to the violation by the Respondent of Articles I and VI of the Convention must therefore be upheld.

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Remedies and Reparations
462. . . .. Since it now has to rule on the claim for reparation, it must ascertain whether, and to what extent, the injury asserted by the Applicant is the consequence of wrongful conduct by the Respondent with the consequence that the Respondent should be required to make reparation for it, in accordance with the principle of customary international law stated above. In this context, the question just mentioned, whether the genocide at Srebrenica would have taken place even if the Respondent had attempted to prevent it by employing all means in its possession, becomes directly relevant, for the definition of the extent of the obligation of reparation borne by the Respondent as a result of its wrongful conduct. The question is whether there is a sufficiently direct and certain causal nexus between the wrongful act, the Respondent’s breach of the obligation to prevent genocide, and the injury suffered by the Applicant, consisting of all damage of any type, material or moral, caused by the acts of genocide. Such a nexus could be considered established only if the Court were able to conclude from the case as a whole and with a sufficient degree of certainty that the genocide at Srebrenica would in fact have been averted if the Respondent had acted in compliance with its legal obligations. However, the Court clearly cannot do so. As noted above, the Respondent did have significant means of influencing the Bosnian Serb military and political authorities which it could, and therefore should, have employed in an attempt to prevent the atrocities, but it has not been shown that, in the specific context of these events, those means would have sufficed to achieve the result which the Respondent should have sought. Since the Court cannot therefore regard as proven a causal nexus between the Respondent’s violation of its obligation of prevention and the damage resulting from the genocide at Srebrenica, financial compensation is not the appropriate form of reparation for the breach of the obligation to prevent genocide.

463. It is however clear that the Applicant is entitled to reparation in the form of satisfaction, and this may take the most appropriate form, as the Applicant itself suggested, of a declaration in the present Judgment that the Respondent has failed to comply with the obligation imposed by the Convention to prevent the crime of genocide. As in the Corfu Channel (United Kingdom v. Albania) case, the Court considers that a declaration of this kind is “in itself appropriate satisfaction” (Merits, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1949, pp. 35, 36), and it will, as in that case, include such a declaration in the operative clause of the present Judgment. The Applicant acknowledges that this failure is no longer continuing, and accordingly has withdrawn the request made in the Reply that the Court declare that the Respondent “has violated and is violating the Convention” (emphasis added).