Tribunal: Oct ‘07

A number of articles from IWPR journalists in Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo, as well as our interns in The Hague, generated significant interest in the local and international media.



The article our Zagreb reporter, Goran Jungvirth, and our US intern in The Hague, Brendan McKenna, produced on the protest of Vukovar victims against the judgment by tribunal judges in the case of three Serbian military officials was published in one of Croatia’s two biggest dailies, Vecernji List, which sells about 100,000 copies daily.



Also, at the end of this month, a story by our Belgrade contributor Aleksandar Roknic on foreign experts helping in the hunt on the tribunal’s most wanted fugitive Ratko Mladic was republished in the Greek newspaper Naftemporiki.



At the beginning of October, the Hague programme project manager gave an interview to De Volkskrant daily, the third biggest newspaper in Holland, on the allegations that Serbia might be preparing an arrest of one of the four remaining fugitives, Stojan Zupljanin. The interview was published in De Volkskrant on October 3, and helped raise IWPR’s profile in the Dutch media.



A journalist on this newspaper, Leen Vervaeke, who often consults us when she prepares articles on the Hague tribunal, says she finds our expert opinion very useful.



“To get ideas and information for the articles on International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, I regularly read IWPR’s newsletters, as they do not only contain the latest news on the ICTY, but also provide interesting background information and well thought-out analysis. I find it very interesting and useful to read IWPR’s articles and have quoted some of their reporters in my articles,” she said.



We’ve also received an interesting feedback from Philip Grant, head of the Swiss NGO Trial Watch, whom the project manager met in Sarajevo earlier this month. In addition to complimenting our coverage of the Hague tribunal – which he reads regularly – Grant expressed for IWPR plans to launch an International Justice page on our website.



Grant says there is a need for a reliable source of information on issues which would be related not just to the ICTY and the International Criminal Court – which IWPR already covers regularly – but to other war crimes courts as well.