The court is currently set up for delegating the trials of the crimes committed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic-Albanian paramilitary organisation which sought the separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia during the 1990s and the eventual creation of a Greater Albania.

[1][2][3][4][5] The alleged crimes concern the period 1998–2000, during and at the end of the Kosovo War and directed afterwards against "ethnic minorities and political opponents".

[10] In 2010, Swiss politician Dick Marty authored a Council of Europe-report in which he noted war crimes had been committed by the KLA.

[7] The court is located outside Kosovo on request of the prosecutor in order to provide adequate protection to witnesses.

The costs of the court will be borne by the EU[13] as part of its Common Foreign and Security Policy.