SUMMARY
[Note to reader: this Country page primarily contains brief information about state-based violence during the period 1946–1974, and to some extent 1975–1988. For more detailed information on organized violence after 1989, please consult the specific Conflict and Dyad pages available on the left-hand side of this page. These pages contain more detailed information regarding all three categories of organized violence in this country from 1989 and onwards (when applicable), as well as detailed information about state-based violence 1975–1988. The left-hand side menu also contains links to Actor pages for all groups involved in organized violence since 1989 in this country, as well as actors involved in state-based violence 1975–1988.]
The Republic of Serbia was declared on 5 June 2006 after Montenegro, the other remaining part of the Yugoslav federation, opted for independence in a referendum and subsequently left the union with the Serbian component. The new constitution of Serbia declared the country the successor entity to the Yugoslav federation.
The country had been under Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian rule, interspersed with short periods of self-rule and autonomy. Following the Nazi occupation during World War II, communist leaders took control of large swathes of the Balkans, forming in 1946 the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (the federation has used different names but will here be abbreviated as FRY), composed of present-day Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Slovenia and North Macedonia. Serbia thus became one of the constituent republics of the FRY, ruled by Josip Broz Tito.
The FRY was a one-party state, in which Tito meticulously tried to balance the competing influences of the constituent republics and to repress ethnic nationalist sentiments so as to keep the peace. After Tito’s death in 1980, a major economic crisis and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the last years of the same decade, the FRY held its first multi-party elections in 1990. As political elites scrambled for electoral support many of the parties appealed to nationalist sentiments, in the end sweeping nationalist parties to victory in most of the FRY’s constituent republic. Croatia and Slovenia soon opted for independence and declared sovereign states in 1991. Intrastate armed conflicts followed in both of these territories in 1991, but ended as both Croatia and Slovenia were recognized as independent states by the international community. In Croatia, however, Bosnian Croats continued the conflict.
Croatia's and Slovenia's secession from the FRY sparked fears in the constituent republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina of being dominated in the federation by the more numerous Serbs. This, coupled with nationalist sentiments, led Bosnia and Herzegovina to also declare independence. The independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina was recognized in 1992, and the intrastate conflict that followed in the country is viewed by the UCDP as being an intrastate conflict within Bosnia and not the FRY. The government of Yugoslavia, however, intervened as a secondary warring party on the side of the Bosnian Serbs that resisted Bosnian independence. North Macedonia also declared independence, in 1991, but seceded peacefully, leaving only Serbia and Montenegro as the constituent republics of the FRY.
In 1996 Kosovo-Albanian resistance towards perceived Serbian domination became violent after a long campaign of peaceful opposition. Kosovo, demographically dominated by Albanians, had its autonomy revoked by the government in 1990, which sparked the drive for independence. The conflict escalated in 1998, which marks the start of yet another intrastate conflict within the FRY. Yugoslavian security forces battled with the UCK (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës, Kosovo Liberation Army) and also made use of one-sided violence against Kosovo-Albanian civilians during 1998 to 1999. The conflict ended in 1999 when a NATO bombing campaign forced the government of Yugoslavia to sign a peace agreement and withdraw its forces from Kosovo. A peacekeeping force was stationed in Kosovo and the future status of the territory was to be decided through negotiations. On 17 February 2008 Kosovo adopted a declaration of independence. Serbia disputed the legality of the declaration and requested an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On 22 July 2010, the ICJ ruled that the declaration did not violate international law. An EU-facilitated dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia resulted in an agreement between Serbia and Kosovo on 19 April 2013 which abolished all of the Republic of Serbia's institutions in Kosovo. Despite the agreement, Serbia has continued to refuse to recognize Kosovo's independence or to ratify the Brussels agreement into a binding law.
The government of Yugoslavia was a secondary warring party in the intrastate conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina (in 1992 and 1993) and in Croatia (in 1992 and 1993), where it supported the rebel Serb entities that fought for independence.
Since 1946 Serbia (Yugoslavia) has experienced the intrastate, non-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organized violence.
