Expert rules out possibility of Pristina's "genocide suit"

Expert rules out possibility of Pristina's "genocide suit"

"Not only is Kosovo not a UN member, but it is not even a signatory to the Convention on Genocide, which is a precondition for a lawsuit to be filed. As a non-member, Kosovo could potentially address the ICJ with the approval of the (UN) Security Council, and there must consensus of the Council's permanent members for that, and that is a question mark," said Milisavljevic.

Beside the fact that Kosovo has neither signed nor ratified the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, another reason why the lawsuit cannot be filed is the ratione temopris condition, the professor said, and explained that if Pristina were to accept the convention now, and refer to the events from 1998 and 1999 in the lawsuit, "the court would very much take that condition into account."

Milisavljevic noted that Croatia's genocide lawsuit against Serbia "(referred to the period) before Serbia, that is, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, signed the convention in April 1992.

"The ICJ in that case refused to consider the events that took place before 1992, " he said.

Considering the previous cases before the ICJ involving the lawsuit of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Milisavljevic thinks that it is "difficult to assume that the court, even if it accepted the Kosovo lawsuit, would change the practice it established in those cases and rule on Serbia's possible responsibility."

This expert also pointed out that as Serbia ratified the convention it made a reservation with respect to an article that envisages the court's mandatory jurisdiction - "that is, we accepted the convention, but not the court's jurisdiction to decide on violations of the convention's provisions."

The reservation reads, "The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia does not consider itself bound by Article IX of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and, therefore, before any dispute to which the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is a party may be validly submitted to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice under this Article, the specific and explicit consent of the FRY is required in each case."

Hashim Thaci announced Pristina's plans to file a genocide lawsuit and seek "war reparations" during a UN Security Council meeting on Kosovo on Tuesday. However, he did not reveal when the lawsuit might be submitted to the ICJ.