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A Well-Rounded Experience

Aishlinn O'Connor

It was the opportunity to observe the war crimes trials that brought me to Sarajevo. It’s not exactly an opportunity I had in my hometown of Kansas City.  And while I was not here long enough to follow an entire trial, I was able to see each type of hearing and to become acquainted with a variety of cases currently in progress. The presence of the other BIRN journalists and their willingness to answer all of my procedural and case-specific questions proved to be an incredible asset in my attempts to understand this system.

What I hadn’t expected in coming to work at BIRN were the chances to attend conferences and get out into the field. While here I attended a conference hosted by UNICRI and the ICTY on the legal legacy of the ICTY and one held by the Mothers of Srebrenica. I also was able to tour the facilities of the International Commission on Missing Persons where remains from the mass graves are identified and re-associated before attending the funeral at Potocari on the anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. These events provided me with the opportunity to meet and hear from the experts who are working for transitional justice from a variety of perspectives- legal, victims’ advocacy, and scientific.

Finally, the interviews I did with representatives of victims’ organizations from across Bosnia allowed me to not only improve my journalistic skills, but also to better understand society from their points of view. While I was interviewing the individuals in order to understand their perceptions of the successes and failures of the court, the interviewees also told of their experiences during the war, of their frustrations with the ethnic political divisions, and of their immense hope in justice. While I can never fully understand what they have been through, the opportunity to talk about their lives and to ask what justice means to them provided me with the human context to the legal process I had been observing in the courts.

Ultimately, BIRN’s unique position as a news agency covering all sides of transitional justice gave me a well-rounded experience that has only increased my desire to learn more about the development of independent media and implementation of domestic and international law in post-conflict societies.  

Aishlinn O'Connor is an undergraduate student at Duke University in North Carolina studying political science, journalism, and documentary photography. She was 2009 summer intern at BIRN's Sarajevo office.