The Balkan wars took place in the 1990s and caused a lot of loss of life and property in Yugoslavia.
Few victims of the Balkan wars of the 1990s have received adequate compensation, and too many war criminals still evade justice locally because of slow courts and a lack of political will, the European Union's top human rights official said on Monday.
"There are too many criminals still around and they have not been punished, too many victims who have not had their rights met," said Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner. Hammarberg was presenting proposals on steps needed to achieve justice and lasting peace in the region, which is not part of the European Union.
"I see this document as a political agenda with recommendations that are addressed to the political leaders," he said. He said the region's states should support the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission and provide it with the human and financial resources to operate effectively.
Hammarberg said the republics of the former Yugoslavia, which was rocked by fighting from about 1991 to 1999, suffered from the same problems: a widespread failure to punish past crimes, weak witness protection systems, and the need to establish the truth and reform institutions.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague has helped the region, but a lot remains to be done, he said. "Human rights must be (observed) on the local level - not imposed from outside," he said.
Verdicts delivered by the international tribunal often draw hostile reactions from local radical groups and leaders, who see the tribunal as biased against their ethnic group.
Hammarberg said local trials in most countries have generally been slow and often obstructed by political parties, creating in effect serious difficulties for the protection of witnesses, especially in the former Serbian province of Kosovo.
He also said there was a need to create a regional trust fund to compensate victims of the Yugoslav wars, including 430,000 people who are still displaced and live in collective centres and around 20,000 women who were victims of rape. "The timing is right and we hope for a constructive response," Hammarberg said.
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