Lecture and workshop on judicial archives held for history students from Serbia

On 13 January 2021, the Mechanism Information Programme for Affected Communities (MIP) held a lecture and online workshop on the use of the ICTY and Mechanism archives for a group of 25 PhD and Master’s level history students from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade, Serbia.

The lecture and the workshop were held as part of a three-week long seminar entitled Researching and Interpreting the Western Balkans Conflicts from the 1990s: Transitional Justice Mechanisms and Sources. The seminar, which was organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) within its Regional War Crimes Project and supported by the Government of the United Kingdom, was developed in co-operation with Professors Dubravka Stojanović and Radina Vučetić from the Department of History of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, along with Serbian historian Marijana Toma, and representatives from the civil society organisation UDI-Euroclio from Belgrade.

During the first session, MIP researcher Nemanja Stjepanović familiarised participants with the work of the ICTY and the Mechanism, and introduced the archival resources that could potentially be useful to historians in researching the conflicts of the1990s. Participants had the opportunity to acquaint themselves with transcripts of witnesses’ testimonies before the ICTY and the Mechanism, as well as material collected and admitted into evidence during trial proceedings before the two courts.

During the second session, participants learned how to access the evidence available in the ICTY’s and the Mechanism’s court records databases. MIP coordinator for youth outreach Anisa Sućeska explained the search tools for these databases and also presented the ICTY and Mechanism websites, after which participants had an opportunity to perform searches on their own.

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 ICTY and Mechanism cases. The MIP is generously supported by the European Union and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.