Carla Del Ponte

July 11 – 22, 1995 · 8,372 total casualties

Srebrenica is the defining moral catastrophe of the Yugoslav Wars and of post-Cold War European history. The massacre legally established the term 'genocide' for a European atrocity for the first time since the Nuremberg trials, confirmed by both the ICTY and the International Court of Justice. The failure of the UN 'safe areas' policy destroyed the credibility of traditional peacekeeping and was the direct catalyst for Operation Deliberate Force — the NATO bombing campaign that finally brought the Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table.

February 28, 1998 – June 10, 1999 · 13,535 total casualties

The Kosovo War established the precedent of humanitarian intervention without UN Security Council authorization — a radical departure from international law that NATO justified as necessary to prevent genocide, and which Russia and China condemned as illegal aggression. The war produced what would become the 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine and directly led to Kosovo's eventual declaration of independence in 2008. It was also the first time in history that a functioning state was stripped of territorial control by an international military alliance without a UN mandate.

October 5, 2000 · 2 total casualties

The October 5 uprising ended a decade of Milošević's authoritarian rule that had launched four wars and reduced Yugoslavia to Serbia and Montenegro. His transfer to The Hague was a watershed in international criminal law — it demonstrated that heads of state were no longer immune from prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Milošević died of a heart attack in his cell at The Hague in March 2006, before a verdict could be reached, leaving his victims without formal legal closure.