The marketplace massacre in Sarajevo: the ethical issues

As a final practical application I now wish to use constitutive theory in order to answer some of the difficult moral problems the international community encounters in the territories of former Yugoslavia. A central problem there (and elsewhere in Eastern Europe) revolves around the question: “Who is entitled to what state, where?” I intend approaching this topic obliquely by focussing on recent developments in Bosnia and more specifically on a single event which demanded an international response, viz. the mortar bomb attack on civilians in a marketplace in Sarajevo in February 1994. Such a study will be useful more generally in that there is every reason to suppose that similar cases are likely to arise in the future both there and elsewhere in the world.

The mortar attack on the marketplace was seen as a moral outrage by the international press who, no doubt, anticipated that readers would view it in a similar light. A glance at any of the “quality” newspapers in London in the immediate aftermath of the attack reveals a number of expressions of moral outrage at the killing of sixty-eight civilians. Notice the unmistakably moral character of the terms used.