Jury is still out on Yugoslav war crimes tribunal

General Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb commander, has been found guilty of war crimes and other serious violations of international law. This was the last trial judgment to be delivered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia before its closure at the end of this year. It is one of the most important trials conducted by the war crimes court to date. It also marks the end of an era for one of the most significant developments in international criminal justice since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals established in the aftermath of the Second World War. However, apart from punishing some notorious individuals, what did the creation of the war crimes court achieve?