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Yesterday, Hajra Catic buried her husband, Junuz, in the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center. This solemn act was one part of the commemorative ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. In addition to Junuz's mortal remains, more than 500 coffins were buried in the cemetery yesterday, joining the gravesites of the 1,327 victims that have already been identified and buried there. The mass funeral is the final step in a process that illustrates the importance of pursuing justice in a post-conflict society.

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb and Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladic, overtook the United Nations safe area of Srebrenica. More than 8,100 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were executed and their bodies placed in mass graves. In an attempt to cover up the crimes, Serb forces later dug up and transferred the remains to secondary and tertiary grave sites in Eastern Bosnia. The moving of the bodies, in the words of Amor Masovic, director of Bosnia's Federal Commission on Missing Persons, represented a "patented innovation" in the history of genocide.

After the Serb takeover, Hajra, and the other women and children of the Srebrenica enclave - more than 20,000 people in total - were expelled to the nearby city of Tuzla in Bosnian government-controlled territory. There they waited in vain for news about the fate of their loved ones. Junuz Catic never arrived.

Junuz's journey to his final resting place in the Potocari memorial centre intersected with many important, though sometimes overlooked, forms of justice. Together these processes represent an integral part of Bosnia's transition from a destabilized state to a society in which its institutions respond to the needs of its most vulnerable.

The most visible form of justice is the legal prosecution of war criminals. The UN Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in May 1993 to address the crimes committed there. From the onset, the tribunal hoped to influence the processes of democratization and the development of the rule of law in the region. Although its success has been debated, the recent showing of a video recording at the trial of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic demonstrated the international court's potentially powerful reach within the region. The tape's shocking images of the execution of six young Bosnian Muslim civilian prisoners from Srebrenica forced the hand of the Serbian government to arrest members of a Serb special police unit known as the Scorpions.

The presence of war criminals in Bosnian society inhibits not only the return of residents to their pre-war homes, but reinforces the fissions of nationalist politics. By one estimate, one out of every 389 persons could be indicted for violations of international humanitarian law.

Many of the war's criminals now make up its present mafia network. Nationalist politics continue to block Bosnia's road to Europe - as was demonstrated by NATO's recent rejection of Bosnia's membership in its Partnership for Peace program and the European Union's refusal to sign a stabilization and association agreement with Bosnia, the first step in the long process towards accession into the EU.

While there are only 19 cases relating to the Srebrenica genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the judicial process is slow and imperfect, the tribunal's existence led to the creation of local courts responsible for prosecuting war crimes. Working in tandem, the international and local courts are having an impact. As one Bosnian citizen said, "Just removing war criminals from society opens the doors to democracy."

A less recognizable, though equally critical form of justice is the identification of missing persons in Bosnia, including Srebrenica's victims. Much of the international community's early reconstruction efforts concentrated on physical aid, rebuilding houses and encouraging return. But many Bosnians sought a different kind of return - that of their loved ones' mortal remains. The identification of missing relatives gives surviving family members the answers they have sought since 1995. Learning the fate of their loved ones, they can now move on with their own lives, sometimes choosing to return to their pre-war homes to be closer to the cemetery at Potocari where their relatives are now buried.

But the pursuit of justice also affects the economic status of the war's victims. Before they could receive pension payments for their missing relative, many survivors had to declare their loved ones as dead, rather than missing, essentially cashing in hope for money. In the case of Srebrenica's surviving family members, this was a particularly painful procedure. In a community lacking male heads of households, many wives and mothers felt pressure to make this decision. Bosnia's Missing Persons Law, passed in 2004, rectified this post-war quandary, allowing family members to collect benefits without a death certificate.

Other post-war societies can learn from the Bosnian example. Srebrenica shows how these multiple forms of justice, local and international, contribute to social reconstruction while they lend strength to nascent political and legal institutions.

Hajra Catic's son also went missing after the fall of the UN enclave. She has yet to find him. Her dream now is to bury him next to Junuz.

The two men most responsible for their disappearances, Gen. Mladic (now charged with war crimes) and Radovan Karadzic, former leader of the wartime Bosnian Serbs, however, continue to walk free. Justice is making its inroads into post-war Bosnian society, but there is still much work to be done.

Lara J. Nettelfield, a political science Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, is an affiliate of the Research and Documentation Center, Sarajevo. Sarah Wagner, an anthropology Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, has worked with the International Commission on Missing Persons.