Lawyers in the Netherlands are preparing to bring at least four cases before Dutch courts seeking damages on behalf of a number of Syrian citizens for pain and suffering caused during the Syrian war, the latest European bid to bring a measure of justice to a conflict that has killed an estimated 500,000 people. They base their efforts in the principle of universal jurisdiction, whereby a state or international body can claim jurisdiction over the perpetrator of a crime regardless of where that crime was committed.

At the outset of World War II, 60,000 Roma people lived in Serbia, and 300,000 in Yugoslavia as a whole. Researchers and experts say there is still no exact data on the number of Roma who were killed during World War II, but estimates suggest that 12,000 to 20,000 of them died in Serbia. Their deaths were a direct or indirect consequence of the Nazi occupiers’ rigorous anti-Roma laws, which were implemented by Serbia’s collaborationist regime.

Around 140 journalists and media workers were killed during and after the violent break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but only one person has ever been convicted of responsibility for any of their deaths—Serb paramilitary boss Dragan Vasiljkovic, alias ‘Captain Dragan’, who was found guilty of an attack in Croatia in which a German journalist died. Amid the hysteria of nationalist unrest, journalists were seen by some as enemies who reported inconvenient truths.

When a fire breaks out in the Bosnian city of Mostar, Sabit Golos, a veteran firefighter, knows that he does not have to worry unless the flames take hold on the Muslim side of what was, from 1992 until 1994, the front line in a vicious ethnic conflict. That is because Mostar, though long at peace, has two separate fire brigades, one made up mostly of Muslims like Mr. Golos, who are responsible for putting out fires on the east side of the old front line and a second one staffed by Catholic Croats who douse flames on the other side.