The tradition of international criminal tribunals which started with the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals was returned with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. As a result of the bloody wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Security Council of the United Nations decided to establish the ICTY as an ad hoc tribunal, that was approved by the resolutions 808 and 827. The main purpose of the paper is to highlight the features of the ICTY during its mandate from 1993 to 2017. For the realization of this research are used qualitative methods, based on the bibliography that is related with international criminal law, with special emphasis with the activities of international criminal tribunals. Furthermore, some data are also collected from the credible internet sources, which have valuable information about the procedures of the ICTY and for the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. The results of the study demonstrate that during its mandate, the ICTY was accompanied with a lot of successes which distinguish it from the other international criminal tribunals. At the same time, the ICTY has also a lot of failures, which have come as a result of various political influences within it. The conclusions of this paper aim to increase knowledge about the activity of the ICTY, by offering important information for its establishment and organs, and for its main successes and failures.
