Which Court Decides What Cannot Be Denied

The offence carries almost the same name across the former Yugoslavia. Deny a genocide in public and you may go to prison. Read the five criminal codes next to each other, as Srđan Aleksić does in his 2025 monograph Genocid u međunarodnom i nacionalnom krivičnom pravu, and the resemblance ends there. Each state files the offence in a different chapter of its code, protects a different set of court findings and punishes it on a different scale.

Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and North Macedonia all have a genocide denial law. Serbia’s, added in 2016, protects only crimes established by a Serbian court or by the International Criminal Court. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s names four sources, including the Yugoslav tribunal in The Hague. Croatia’s requires no prior judgment at all.

Where each genocide denial law sits

A criminal code is organised by the value it protects, and the chapter tells you what the legislator thought was at stake. Aleksić’s comparison finds five different answers. Serbia places denial among crimes against humanity and other goods protected by international law. North Macedonia puts it among crimes against humanity and international law. Croatia treats it as a crime against public order. Bosnia and Herzegovina files it under crimes against the freedoms and rights of man and citizen. Montenegro puts it among crimes against the constitutional order and security of the state.

Only North Macedonia has made denial an offence in its own right, Article 407-a, “Approval or justification of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes”. Everywhere else it is a form of an older offence. In Serbia it is racial and other discrimination (Article 387). In Croatia it is public incitement to violence and hatred (Article 325). In Bosnia and Herzegovina (Article 145a) and Montenegro (Article 370) it is incitement to national, racial and religious hatred.

What exactly is forbidden

The verbs differ too. Serbia and Montenegro punish approving, denying the existence of, or significantly minimising the crimes. North Macedonia adds justifying. Bosnia and Herzegovina punishes approval, denial, gross minimisation and any attempt to justify. Croatia speaks of approval, denial and substantial minimisation. Whether a minimisation is “significant”, the monograph notes, is a question of fact for the court in each case. Every one of the five laws requires the act to be public.

The list of crimes protected also varies. Serbia and Montenegro cover genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Croatia adds the crime of aggression. North Macedonia adds the Holocaust and other crimes of the National Socialist regime.

Whose judgment counts

This is the provision that decides most cases. In Serbia, the crime must have been established by a final judgment of a Serbian court or of the International Criminal Court, and the speaker must know it. Aleksić’s analysis spells out the consequence: a judgment of a national court of another state does not count. Montenegro accepts a Montenegrin court or “an international criminal court”. Bosnia and Herzegovina accepts four: the Nuremberg tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Court and its own courts. North Macedonia has one form that requires a final judgment and another that does not, even where no perpetrator has been identified. Croatia requires none.

Read together, the comparison shows something the separate texts do not. The ICTY, the court that tried the region’s wars, is named in only one of the five laws. On its plain wording Serbia’s law does not reach the tribunal’s judgments, including those that established the Srebrenica genocide, or those of the courts in Sarajevo. Srebrenica genocide denial is therefore punishable in Bosnia and Herzegovina but, on the text alone, not in Serbia. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s law was used for the first time in May 2025, when its state court sentenced Vojin Pavlović to two and a half years for posters celebrating the “liberation” of Srebrenica.

How hard each law strikes

Under each genocide denial law, the basic penalty is six months to five years in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia, up to three years in Croatia, and a fine or up to three years in North Macedonia. The real differences lie in the aggravated forms.

North Macedonia raises the penalty to one to five years where the act stirs hatred or violence, causes public unrest or is especially threatening or insulting. Montenegro goes further: one to eight years where denial comes with coercion, abuse, mockery of national symbols or desecration of monuments and graves, and two to ten years where an official abuses his position or the act leads to violence. Bosnia and Herzegovina sets a minimum of one year for spreading leaflets or images and three years where the act may disturb public order, is threatening or insulting, or is committed by an official or public employee. It is the only one of the five to criminalise glorification as such. Awarding an honour to a person convicted of genocide, or naming a street, square, park, bridge or institution after them, carries at least three years.

Serbia and Croatia, the monograph concludes, have no aggravated forms at all. Their genocide denial law has a single penalty range for every case.

The open question

The monograph sets these laws against a principle the UN General Assembly restated in May 2024: criminal responsibility for genocide is individual and cannot be attributed to any ethnic, religious or other group as a whole. Read that way, a genocide denial law protects victims; it does not assign collective guilt. That principle comes from the Genocide Convention itself.

How a court establishes genocide in the first place is a separate problem, examined in Four Crimes That Look Like Genocide. Why the record matters at all is the subject of Aleksić Perspectives, The Last Address of Responsibility. What the comparison leaves open is a choice only legislatures can make: whose judgment a society agrees it may not deny.

Frequently asked questions

Does Serbia’s genocide denial law cover the ICTY’s judgments?

Not on its plain wording. Article 387(5) protects crimes established by a Serbian court or the International Criminal Court, and a comparative analysis notes that judgments of another state’s courts do not count. The ICTY is not named.

Which former Yugoslav state punishes glorification of war criminals?

Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 2021 its Criminal Code punishes honouring a person convicted of genocide or war crimes, or naming streets, squares or institutions after them, with at least three years.

Which country punishes Holocaust denial in the same provision?

North Macedonia. Its Article 407-a covers genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, the Holocaust and other crimes of the National Socialist regime.

Which states have no aggravated form of genocide denial?

Serbia and Croatia, according to the comparative analysis in Srđan Aleksić’s 2025 monograph. North Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina all impose heavier penalties in aggravated cases.

Sources and further reading

S. Aleksić, Genocid u međunarodnom i nacionalnom krivičnom pravu (Banja Luka, 2025), ch. 3 §3

Detektor/BIRN, first genocide denial conviction in BiH (22 May 2025)

UN press release on General Assembly resolution 78/282 (23 May 2024)

UN, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide