Karadzic verdict: Justice delayed better than justice denied

Payam Akhavan is professor of international law at McGill University and a former UN prosecutor at The Hague.

On March 24, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague delivered its historic judgment against Radovan Karadzic, the notorious Bosnian Serb president during the catastrophic 1992-95 Bosnian war. He was found guilty of the Srebrenica genocide and other acts of "ethnic cleansing" against countless Bosnian Muslim and Croat civilians.

At the age of 70, his sentence of 40 years means that he will spend the rest of his days behind bars. This is a triumph for international law. All too often, victims have no redress. But the path to justice for Mr. Karadzic was long and tortuous, and this is an important lesson for the current struggle to hold leaders accountable for atrocities in places such as Syria and Iraq.

In 1992-93, as a young lawyer just out of law school, I became one of the first United Nations human rights investigators to witness the unspeakable horrors of the Bosnian war. I was outraged when I subsequently met Mr. Karadzic at peace negotiations in Geneva. I was still too idealistic to reconcile diplomatic euphemisms with the reality of mass murder and systematic rape. I was inspired by the legacy of the 1945 Nazi trials at Nuremberg and honoured to play a role in establishing the first-ever UN tribunal. But this was not an instance of postwar victor's justice. The ethnic demagogues were still in power, committing atrocities, and demands for accountability were ridiculed as unrealistic and irrelevant. The UN tribunal seemed more like a fig leaf for the embarrassing failure to confront genocide in the heart of Europe. All I could hope for was symbolic justice. I helped draft the indictment against Mr. Karadzic in 1994-95. But the thought that he would one day be a defendant in The Hague was unimaginable.

Following the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord, the political fortunes of Mr. Karadzic began to change. He went into hiding for almost 13 years until his astonishing cover as a notable naturopath was exposed. He was transferred to The Hague in 2008 to stand trial and was finally convicted this year. The victims waited 20 years for justice and even then, it seems that for genocide, no punishment is enough. But without this accountability, the healing of wounds would have been that much more difficult and reconciliation in a multiethnic culture that was deliberately ripped apart by ruthless demagogues would have been even further from reach.

These are important lessons for a peace process in Syria and Iraq. These too are multiethnic mosaics shattered by hate mongering and violence as an instrument of power. A proposal to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court was opposed by a Russian veto at the UN Security Council. Despite the shocking spectacle of Islamic State crimes, up to 95 per cent of civilian deaths are attributed to the government of Bashar al-Assad. Is it possible to reconcile a sustainable peace in Syria with impunity for these crimes? What message would an amnesty send to future generations?

In Iraq, United States Secretary of State John Kerry recently condemned the IS extermination and sexual enslavement of Yazidi Kurds as "genocide"; yet this powerful label is not followed by meaningful action to give the survivors some measure of accountability. I have recently approached the Canadian government on behalf of the Kurdistan Regional Government to help establish a truth commission that will provide a cathartic platform for victims to tell their stories to the world and stigmatize IS in the eyes of impressionable youth in the region. A historical record is at least a first step on the path to justice. Remembrance, not self-induced amnesia, will help end the cycle of violence. What we forget, we are condemned to repeat again and again.

The Karadzic judgment is a reminder that there are no easy or immediate solutions for victims seeking redress. But it is also a reminder that with moral clarity and political persistence, it is possible to subject once untouchable tyrants to the rule of law and to build a better future. For genocide, justice delayed is better than justice denied.