ICTY in NYC

In a throwback to my Hague days, I joined other international criminal justice enthusiasts on Tuesday night at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival to take in a documentary featuring updates on Ms. del Ponte's famed prosecutions.

Carla's List tracks the Prosecutor's careful and impassioned search for those accused of war crimes in the conflict that acted as a catalyst for the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Apparently, the List is down to four--an amazing feat, given that Carla's team has no police force to round up indictees. This lack of teeth is not uncommon in the world of international institutions, but it may be the only way through which to encourage states to become party to these organizations. The International Criminal Court has begun to feel the burden of this mode of enforcement with its outstanding arrest warrants for five members of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army, a Sudanese rebel leader and Sudan's Minister for Humanitarian Affairs.

Two of the four on Carla's List are considered big ticket items; Mladic and Karadzic are charged with orchestrating and carrying out the Srebenica massacre in 1995. Milosevic passed away in his cell before he could be convicted. So these two Most Wanteds are Carla's current hope for a high-publicity, international norm-shifting trial.

Sitting in the Walter Reade theater at the Lincoln Center for the Arts in New York City, thousands of miles away from where these crimes were allegedly committed, I only wish that the film delved deeper in to the lives of the victims, the consequences of international negligence and complicity--and the way the world could be changed should international law be followed and enforced by the great powers.