EU Support for Truth Commission in the Balkans

Pierre Mirrell told a conference in The Hague that the EU fully supports the idea of establishing a truth commission, an initiative which has been launched by a group of civil society organisations from the Balkans.

Mirrell said that the commission should take a lead in future efforts toward reconciliation in the region, and that the process should be led from the bottom up and be locally owned.

RECOM is an initiative aimed at establishing a truth commission to deal with war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia during the wars in the 1990s. It was launched in 2006 by the Humanitarian Law Center in Serbia and Documenta in Zagreb, and it currently has the support of a number of NGOs from the region.

The groups aim to collect one million signatures and send them to regional governments which will then make a final decision about the establishment of such a commission.

Patrick Robinson, the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, also expressed his support. He said that a truth commission “will complement the work of the Tribunal”, which will end its work by 2012 for ongoing cases, and 2014 for appellate cases.

Talking about the legacy of the ICTY, which is the main topic of a two-day conference held in The Hague this week, Mirrell also said that the role of justice is a “key to the EU” for the region and something that Brussels will push for in the near future.