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The Sarajevo spark that ignited World War I also energized international lawyers to develop improved standards and institutions for conflict resolution. The Yugoslav Republic created after the first world war fragmented in a bloody 1990s conflict which severely tested that twentieth century effort to promote the rule of law. The bloody carnage triggered memories of Nazi genocide as well as predictions of World War III. Several republics of the former Yugoslavia entered the United Nations as newly indpendent states in 1992 while fighting continued between three ethnic groups over contested territory in Bosnia-Herzegovena.
The United Nations Security Council ordered an arms embargo against both the new Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the remnants of Yugoslavia--Serbia and Montenegro. International efforts to mediate between Bosnia's Muslims, Croats, and Serbs failed to slow the massive killing and refugee exodus. The minority Serbs controlled over seventy per cent of Bosnia. U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia unsuccessfully attempted to provide "safe havens" for Muslim refugees, but mass killing continued.
In March 1993 Bosnia's predominantly Muslim government charged Yugoslavia with genocide and asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to recognize the state's sovereign right to obtain weapons in self defense. In addition, the U.N. Security Council created an ad hoc war crimes tribunal that subsequently indicted over fifty Serbs and a few Bosnian Muslims and Croats for war crimes. NATO troops ultimately enforced a ceasefire after the Dayton peace accord of December 1995.
During a tenuous peace, the Bosnian government pursued its case against Yugoslavia in the ICJ and demanded reparations for genocidal crimes dating to April 1992.
