INTRODUCTION

There is a tendency to think of witnesses who testify before an international criminal tribunal in terms of how the individual is affected by the experience. The witnesses, however, are not passive vessels whom the Tribunal shapes. Witnesses appear before the ICTY with their own unique set of experiences, reasons for testifying, and interpretations of what this testimonial process has meant to them. Their personal encounters with the international justice system are the subject of this chapter as we seek to understand the reasons that motivate individuals to testify, what they know about this foreign court that has called on them to bear witness, and how they perceive their own personal treatment by the ICTY. We examine the micro- or individual-level impact of the ICTY to ultimately understand what this process means to the individual. We take up separately in Chapter 6 the witnesses’ assessments of the ICTY as an international institution that is charged with administering justice, advancing deterrence, and promoting peace.

This chapter proceeds as follows. First, we look at witness knowledge and preparation regarding the testimonial process before describing the reasons why individuals testify, their own assessments of the fairness with which they were treated by various actors involved in the judicial process, and finally, their own sense of personal satisfaction with their performance on the witness stand. The second part of the chapter focuses on an in-depth and multivariate analysis of two of the most critical issues pertaining to the witness experience. We examine how ethnicity, gender, and wartime trauma are related to the reasons why some individuals feel more compelled to testify than others. We find that while individuals who identify as Croatian or Serbian are less likely to report being motivated to testify because of a desire to “tell their story,” almost all witnesses regardless of ethnicity report being motivated to testify because of larger, external concerns such as “speaking for the dead” and “as a moral duty to all victims of wars.” Those individuals who suffered the most trauma, however, are more likely to report testifying for both external reasons and internal reasons.