Source: Danas
Where would the archives of Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda be?
Rodoljub Sabic, personal attitude
International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia, famous Hague Tribunal, falls in the group of subjects whose actions are, with a reason, for a long time already attracting the attention of a good part of our public. Therefore it is, at least for me, regardless of often present lack of concentration of our public, still surprising that one event related to the work of this Tribunal has almost completely slipped its attention.
A couple of months ago, or more correctly at the beginning of October, in Hague, on initiative of Secretaries of two international criminal courts, one for Rwanda and this for us much more interesting one, for Former Yugoslavia, an Expert Team started to work managed by Judge Richard Goldstone, Ex-Prosecutor of Tribunal, with the task which, by all means deserves serious attention of our public.Both international courts, as we know, should in due time end their mandates, and stop their operations. That is now making very current the question of keeping the archives of those international courts. It is well known that those courts have archives containing a huge number of documents. It is literally about millions of pages of written evidences and very certainly tens of thousands of hours of audio or audio-visual records.
Of course the problem in dealing with such a huge and precious data bank is something very complex, something that opens up a multitude of questions. How to keep those archives in the future? How and where can they and where they must be located? Do the archives of both international criminal courts should function as one unique archive, or as two, or as several divided archives? How to enable public access to information, which is to the documents contained in the archives?
A serious answer to this and other potential questions can be given only based on completely responsible, complex, multidisciplinary problem approach. Exactly therefore the quoted team of experts has been formed, primarily of lawyers and archivists. Their task is to prepare objective, independent problem analysis and to suggest adequate possible solutions.
The team started to work under official title of Counseling Committee for Archives of International UN Courts for Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Committee should submit the first preliminary report to Secretaries of those Courts in the first quarter of 2008. Before that, as planned, the members of the Committee shall visit all regions for which the Courts' activity is of primary relevance and perform consultations with authorities, experts and civil society.
Such approach of International Criminal Courts to this problem is by itself speaking about great importance they subscribe to archives they have. Of course, they aren't wrong in such evaluation, because this is, according to its scope, almost unique data base representing immeasurable opulence of information relevant for the whole international community. Facts contained in those archives are by all means of indisputable importance for improving the future judicial practice, for legal and general history, for the very idea of international criminal judiciary. It is not by chance, that the Committee Chairman Richard Goldstone has at the very beginning of its work evaluated that the activity of the Committee is, besides else, of key importance also for the future of international judiciary .
But of course, regardless of the importance of those archives, that is, of documents and information contained in them have, from various aspects, both for UN and for international community, it is still beyond any doubt that the greatest importance of them is for the nations and for the people from the region of Former Yugoslavia. It is beyond any doubt and it is, of course completely logical, that a huge number of people from this region, that were in a position to directly or indirectly face the atrocities of war, has a special attitude towards these information, both from the rational and from emotional standpoint.
Therefore it was a specially interesting opportunity for me to meet and speak with Professor Eric Ketelar, Ph.D., Representative of the Counseling Committee for Archives of International Courts of the UN, in special charge of International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia. Of course that I wasn't in any position to satisfy my interest regarding possible outcome of the Commission's activities, because this is still in the sphere of hypothesis. I hope that I have at least used the chance to explain to Professor Ketelar and his collaborators extreme importance that the right to access information contained in this archives might have for our country and our citizens.
I believe that provision of prerequisites for the widest possible access to these information, corrected only when necessary and only in line with democratic standards for protection of official and state secrets and privacy protection, is something we should aspire to in a consistent manner. Probably, by following the similar ideas, some representatives of our judicial institutions, in contact with the Tribunal representatives have (in)formally nominated Belgrade for the seat of Archive.
Only within the context of consistency and thinking about reality of chances for implementation of this, at first glance attractive idea, it is mandatory to remind ourselves of some really unpleasant things. For instance, that we didn't pass the Law on Opening Secret Services' Dossiers of the Previous Regime, that we don't have Law on Secret Data Classification, or a modern Law on Personal Data Protection. And those facts shall be, besides else, relevant for evaluating (in)consistency of our aspirations regarding this matter. With what outcome, we shall see. But whatever the outcome might be, start of work of the Counseling Committee for International UN Court's Archives is surely one more from the series of good reminders for us, to remind us that it is high time to pass those laws.
The Author is Commissioner for Information
