A new Council of Europe report said that ex-Yugoslav states’ failure to fully confront war crimes continues to affect people’s human rights and warned that a resurgence of ethno-nationalism could threaten the peace.
The failure to “fully confront” war crimes and the root causes of the 1990s conflicts continues to have devastating consequences for the respect for human rights, the rule of law, and social cohesion in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner Dunja Mijatovic said in a report published on Thursday.
Almost three decades after the end of the Yugoslav wars, with victims, witnesses, and suspects aging and dying, and with less and less available evidence, criminal prosecutions for wartime crimes are becoming more difficult, Mijatovic explained in the report entitled “Dealing with the Past for a Better Future.”
Mijatovic pointed out that “ethno-nationalist discourse” has been “reinvigorated” in the region, seriously hindering efforts toward reconciliation.
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