Representatives of war victims and their families are gathering at the Potocari Memorial Centre near Srebrenica, where thousands of victims of the 1995 massacres are buried, to watch a live stream of the Karadzic verdict.
Members of the public and journalists are now making their way to the courtroom – because of the large attendance, they have been asked to be inside by 1.15pm local time ahead of the start of proceedings at 2pm.
The five judges have now entered the courtroom as the proceedings get under way.
Judge Vagn Joensen said he will not read out the whole verdict but only the summary.
At the start of the hearing, judge Joensen recalled the first-instance verdict which was handed down in 2016 and which sentenced Karadzic to 40 years in prison.
Joensen said he will first address Karadzic's claim that the case was unfair.
The judge said that the court violated Karadzic's rights by conducting visits to crime scenes without him, but added that this did not significantly harm his defence.
The appeals chamber found that facts were only wrongly determined in two incidents, so Karadzic was acquitted of them, but for all the other crimes in the 20 municipalities, Karadzic failed to prove his rights were violated, the judge said.
Speaking about the charge accusing him of terrorising the civilian population of Sarajevo, judge Joensen said that Karadzic failed to prove that the trial chamber made a mistake in finding him guilty of the massacre at the Markale market in Sarajevo - one of the worst atrocities in the Bosnian capital during the siege of the city.
The judge said that the defence’s appeal failed to prove that the trial chamber erred in finding Karadzic guilty for taking part a joint criminal enterprise to terrorise the population of Sarajevo.
The judge said the trial chamber reasonably concluded that orders that Karadzic gave, saying that civilians should not be attacked, were given at times which were politically beneficial to him - when he was negotiating or when under pressure by the international community.
Speaking about the Srebrenica genocide charge, Joensen said that the key evidence was ‘Directive 7’, a Bosnian Serb decision in March 1995 which Karadzic signed, saying that conditions should be made “unbearable” for people living in Srebrenica.
Karadzic failed to prove that the trial chamber erred in concluding that as the commander in chief of the Bosnian Serb armed forces, he was supposed to investigate and punish perpetrators of crimes, the judge continued.
The judge has now turned to the Hague prosecutors’ appeal against the first-instance verdict.