The ICJ president, British Judge Rosalyn Higgins, who is presiding over the proceedings, gave a brief overview of what she described as the complex history of the dispute. The main hearing is due to last until May 9 and will be held before 15 judges. A verdict is expected to be handed down by the end of the year.
"We are here because the authorities in Belgrade took BH's non-Serb population on a road to hell covered with the dead, the destruction of families, religious facilities, property, houses, towns and villages, all conditions for living," BH's representative Sakib Softic said in his opening speech.
He added the arguments BH would present would lead to the conclusion that SCG had breached the UN convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide and other international norms.
Softic blamed the 13-year gap between the launching of the lawsuit and the trial to SCG's "procrastination tactic". He said that denial of the crimes committed in BH, including in Srebrenica, existed in SCG and that this was part of the SCG's defence strategy.
Softic said BH did not seek the punishment of individuals but, in the interest of healing the war wounds, damages for the victims of "ethnic cleansing which in BH was tantamount to genocide".
He said that obtaining justice before the ICJ was hugely important for BH and its citizens. Likening the wave of violence which hit BH in 1992 to a tsunami, Softic said the crimes against and persecution of non-Serbs incited by Belgrade had destroyed BH's multiethnic character, the youth of several generations and a great part of its non-Serb population.
BH's other counsel, Phon van den Biesen, said the trial would hear in the coming weeks about a long, disgusting, genocidal attack against people whose only mistake was that they were not Serbs.
He said the goal of the Serb aggression in BH was to entirely or partly destroy a group of people because of their religion or ethnicity, which he added was how the UN convention defined genocide.
Van den Biesen said the prosecution would use evidence and sentences handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, notably its prosecution's evidence against indictees from SCG and their Bosnian Serb accomplices.
He, too, criticised SCG's procrastination tactic before the ICJ and labelled as insulting the genocide counterclaim Belgrade filed in 1997 and then withdrew in 2001 for genocide against Bosnian Serbs.
Van den Biesen said the prosecution would prove how the Greater Serbia concept had been prepared and carried out not only in BH, but also in the wars in Croatia and Kosovo.
BH filed the claim against SCG on 20 March 1993. Since then, counsel for the plaintiff and the defendant presented arguments in writing on two occasions while SCG attempted to contest the ICJ's jurisdiction in the claim. Although the Court declared itself competent in 1996, SCG continues to contest the ICJ's jurisdiction and will continue doing so during the proceedings.
Before the trial started, about 100 protesters from BH, including women from Srebrenica, as well as Bosnian citizens from the Netherlands and Germany, rallied in front of the ICJ headquarters with signs and Bosnian flags to support their homeland's claim.
Croatia launched a genocide claim against SCG before the ICJ on 2 July 1999. The Court has not yet ruled whether it is competent in the case, which differs from BH's claim in many elements.
Croatian Ambassador to the Netherlands Frane Krnic was present in the courtroom today.