MIP engages with young activists at Transitional Justice School in Sarajevo

On 25 October 2025, the Mechanism Information Programme for Affected Communities (MIP) participated in the Educational and Activist School of Transitional Justice, entitled Where have you been in 2024? held in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The school, which gathered 20 students from BiH and Croatia, was organised by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) from Croatia.

MIP Researcher Mr. Nemanja Stjepanović conducted two sessions. In the first session, he introduced the legacy and judicial archives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism), highlighting the wealth of documents related to the 1990s conflicts in BiH, including trial records, witness testimonies, and evidence concerning key incidents and atrocities.

Given that the participants were from Croatia and BiH, they primarily asked questions about crimes committed during the conflict between the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian Defence Council — focusing on the atrocities in Ahmići, Mostar, Uzdol, and Grabovica. Their inquiries centred on the roles played by various military and political actors during the conflict, as well as how the ICTY worked to establish accountability for these crimes.

The second session focused on how to access the evidence available in the ICTY’s and the Mechanism’s Unified Court Records database. Mr. Stjepanović demonstrated the search tools for navigating the databases, after which participants explored documents admitted into evidence during trial proceedings, as well as transcripts of witness testimonies before the ICTY and the Mechanism.

This participation in the YIHR’s Educational and Activist School of Transitional Justice is part of MIP’s ongoing efforts to support projects and events organised by civil society organisations working on transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia region.

The aim of the MIP is to improve the knowledge and understanding of citizens and communities in the countries of the former Yugoslavia about the crimes committed during the conflicts of the 1990s, based on the jurisprudence of the ICTY and the Mechanism. 

The MIP is funded by the European Union.