The Impact Question: The ICTY and the Restoration and Maintenance of Peace

This chapter seeks to address an important 'impact gap' within the transitional justice literature, by using empirical data to explore and evaluate the ICTY's influence on the restoration and maintenance of peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In order to assess the Tribunal's social impact, it uses three key criteria - namely perceptions of the Tribunal, acknowledgement/denial, and inter-ethnic relations on the ground. Measured against each of these factors, the chapter finds little evidence that the ICTY has contributed to the restoration and maintenance of peace - and more specifically to reconciliation - in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Rather than necessarily interpreting this as a failure of the ICTY, however, it questions whether it is in fact realistic to expect a geographically remote judicial body to aid such a personal process as reconciliation.