Ratko Mladić’s Funeral and the Case for International Justice
The scenes surrounding Ratko Mladić’s funeral in Belgrade on Monday, September 7, 2026, were disturbing, but I can’t say they surprised me.
Anyone who’s traveled across the region has seen how Mladić is still celebrated. From Belgrade to Banja Luka, I’ve come across Mladić “collectibles” and memorabilia portraying him as a national hero rather than a convicted war criminal.
His funeral didn’t create this revisionism. It showed just how deeply rooted it already is, especially with senior political, military, and religious figures in attendance.
In April 2016, I visited the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and watched part of Mladić’s trial. I still have the visitor pass from that day.
I remember being struck by how gaunt and old he looked. He seemed nothing like the commanding general I remembered seeing in news coverage from the 1990s. There was nothing larger than life about him in that courtroom. He was a defendant being made to answer for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
A few years later, while working with USAID in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I managed USAID’s assistance to the International Commission on Missing Persons. Our funding helped keep three forensic specialists working at the Podrinje Identification Project in Tuzla so that the search for people still missing from the conflicts of the 1990s could continue.
The broader project supported excavations, the recovery of human remains, DNA analysis, and new identifications. It also supported families who’d spent years, and in many cases decades, waiting for answers.
That work reinforced for me that justice doesn’t happen only in a courtroom. It can also begin at an excavation site or in a forensic laboratory, when remains are identified, evidence is preserved, and a family finally learns what happened to someone they lost.
This is why institutions such as the ICTY and the International Criminal Court matter. A tribunal can’t force a society to accept the truth. It can’t stop politicians from exploiting ethnic grievances or prevent people from turning convicted perpetrators into heroes. We’ve seen that throughout the former Yugoslavia.
But it can establish what happened and who was responsible. Without that record, denial becomes much easier. Mladić’s responsibility for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes isn’t a matter of political opinion or competing versions of history. It was established through years of testimony, evidence, and legal proceedings.
The funeral in Belgrade was another reminder that a conviction doesn’t end the struggle over memory. Accountability still matters because the way societies remember past crimes influences what they may be willing to excuse or repeat in the future.
#Srebrenica#InternationalJustice#TransitionalJustice#HumanRights#GenocidePrevention#WesternBalkans#BosniaAndHerzegovinaiaAndHerzegovina
