During the 1990s, the world was shaken by the war that was raging in the Balkans. Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II was marked by widespread and grim war crimes. It lasted for almost ten years and left over 130,000 ­people dead.

In the midst of the atrocities, Resolution 808 was firmly adopted by the United Nations Security Council. It established the Yugoslavia Tribunal, the first ever UN-created war crimes court. While investigators started to collect evidence and prosecutors composed their first indictments, the search for war criminals began. Ultimately, it took 24 years and over 10,800 trial days to bring the 161 indictees to justice.

Resolution 808: Inside the Yugoslavia ­Tribunal follows the court from the inside, in text and images, tracing the ­stories of the people who worked within it, as well as the places and objects central to the trials. By combining ­investigative ­reporting with human narratives it looks beyond the courtroom, ­documenting how the war and its ­aftermath continue to shape everyday life across the ­Balkans, and giving voice to accounts that have gone largely unrecorded.

Jorie Horsthuis (NL) is a journalist and political scientist. Martino Lombezzi (IT) is a documentary photographer. Since the early 2000s, they have been publishing on the Balkans.

Resolution 808 is a project supported by Strategia Fotografia 2025, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The production of the book is also supported by the Jaap Harten Fonds.

The project is realized by:

Officine Fotografiche

Cultural Partners:

Zona

Gramma

Casa della Memoria

Internazionale

Fotodok

Humanitarian Law Center (HLC)

Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Historijski Muzej BIH)

Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli