Safe Areas

Abstract

This article deals with the issues of legal nature of safe areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1993 to 1995.

UN Security Council, during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, had applied one novelty. The Security Council declared some of the towns and its surroundings in Bosnia and Herzegovina as safe areas, without obtaining consent from the parties to the conflict, without ensuring its adequate protection or determining who exactly is obliged to protect those areas. International Law does not recognize such way of proclaiming a particular area as protected i.e. safe, nor does it recognize such way of protecting civilian population.

In order to identify the problem and take critical stand it is necessary to briefly display content of relevant Provisions of Geneva Convention on Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, respectively Additional Protocols, actions of the Security Council i.e. content of Resolutions that respond to the situation on the ground, stands of the Secretary General of the UN, and evaluate the conformity of their acts with International Law.