KEYWORDS: critical date; succession of states; state creation/disappearance; armed conflict: non-international/international; delimitation of state boundaries; international recognition of a new state; disappearance of a state.
SUMMARY:
The demise of the former SFRY and the emergence of new successor states in its territory happened in a long-term process of the dissolution of Federal Institutions continued by a coup d’Etat in the Federal Presidency and the submission of the Federal Army to the control of Serbia and Montenegro. Aggression against Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina followed. It seems indispensable for the history of the Republic of Croatia and of Croatian people in these areas to ascertain, as much as possible, a sequence of “critical dates”.
These “critical dates” have a practical importance in the process of state succession (in particular in the apportionment of state property, archives and debts of the predecessor state), in land and maritime delimitation of Croatia with neighbouring states (ascertaining the path of the boundary of the former Socialist Republic of Croatia, which on the date of the succession of States, i.e. the “critical date”, became its frontier protected by international law. Further discussed is the application of some rules on serious violations of humanitarian law according to the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and in this respect of the “critical date” of the transformation of the “situation of internal disturbance and tension (riots, isolated and sporadic act of violence)” into a “non-international” armed conflict in the territory of Croatia, and finally the “critical date” when the conflict transformed into the “international armed conflict”.
For grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 from Article 2 of the Statute of the International Tribunal, a person can be accused only in the situation of an international armed conflict. The research on this project should result in the ascertainment of some “critical dates”, or should confirm or deny conclusions in this respect by international judicial organs (Opinion No. 11 of the Arbitration Commission of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia of 16 July 1993 on the dates of the state succession of successor states, and the Decision by the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal in the Tadić case of 2 October 1995). Further discussed are the issues of international law that should be ascertained according to the criteria of this discipline on the basis of the practice of international courts and tribunals, and the practice regarding state succession.
Project financed by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia.
