Twenty Years of Crisis: The Violent Dissolution of Yugoslavia in International Law

The Yugoslav crisis brought armed conflict to the heart of Europe.

It involved the dissolution of a state, internal armed conflict and external armed intervention, ethnic cleansing and probable genocide on a scale not seen since the second World War. These developments created complex challenges of state recognition, peace-keeping and peace enforcement, and humanitarian intervention.

This book investigates the international responses to these developments from the beginning of the crisis in 1988 to its provisional termination with the independence of Kosovo in 2008. The book critically examines the application of diplomatic and international legal tools to the dramatic events in the former Yugoslavia, and assesses the performance of the international agencies and governments involved. Moreover, it considers the impact of the episode on our understanding of the legal rules governing self-determination and secession, internal armed conflict and external intervention.

• First comprehensive review of the entire Yugoslav episode providing a global understanding of the international response to the Yugoslav crisis and its impact on international law.
• Detailed analysis of individual legal aspects of the crisis concerning statehood issues, peace-keeping and humanitarian intervention to aid understanding in relation to the impact of international action on the development of international practice in relation to specialist areas.
• Based in part on first hand experiences of the pertinent events and negotiations, thus being able to offer novel insights on the basis of materials that are difficult to access or that are not in the public domain.