STUDY GUIDE OF HISTORICAL SECURITY COUNCIL

AGENDA ITEM: THE BOSNIAN WAR

USG: ENES TONBUL

ASSISTANT OF USG: ALPEREN BIRLIK

PRESIDENT CHAIR: CIHAN BABAN

BACKGROUND AND GENERAL OVERVIEW

The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995.Though the following of many incidents in early 1992, the war actually started on 6 April 1992. The war ended on 14 December 1995. The main belligerents were the forces of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegeovina, Republika Srpska and Herzeg-Bosnia, who were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia respectively.

The war was part of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Following the Slovenian and Croatian secessions from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina which was inhabited by mainly Muslim Bosniaks (44 percent), as well as Orthodox Serbs (32.5 percent) and Catholic Croats (17 percent) – passed a referendum for independence on 29 February 1992.

This was rejected by the political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs, who had boycotted the referendum. Following Bosnia and Herzegovina's declaration of independence (which gained international recognition), the Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadžić and supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), mobilised their forces inside the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to secure Serb territory, then war soon spread across the country, accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of the Bosniak and Croat population, especially in eastern Bosnia and throughout the Republika Srpska.

The conflict was between the Yugoslav Army units in Bosnia which later changed the name into the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) on the one side, and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) which was largely composed of Bosniaks, and the Croat forces in the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) on the other side. The Croats also aimed at securing parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina as Croatian. The Serb and Croat political leadership had agreed on a partition of Bosnia with the Karađorđevo and Graz agreements, resulting in the Croat forces turning against the ARBiH and the Croat–Bosniak war.The Bosnian War was characterised by bitter fighting, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, ethnic cleansing and systematic mass rape, mainly perpetrated by Serb, and to a lesser extent, Croat and Bosniak forces. Events such as the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre later became iconic of the conflict.

The Serbs, although initially militarily superior due to the weapons and resources provided by the JNA, eventually lost momentum as the Bosniaks and Croats allied themselves against the Republika Srpska in 1994 with the creation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina following the Washington agreement. Pakistan defied the UN's ban on supply of arms to Bosnian Muslims and General

Javed Nasir later claimed that Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, had airlifted anti-tank guided missiles to Bosnia which ultimately turned the tide in favour of Bosnian Muslims and forced the Serbs to lift the siege. After the Srebrenica and Markale massacres, NATO intervened in 1995 with Operation Deliberate Force targeting the positions of the Army of the Republika Srpska, which proved key in ending the war.The war was brought to an end after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on 14 December 1995. Peace negotiations were held in Dayton, Ohio and were finalised on 21 November 1995.According to a report compiled by the UN, and chaired by M. Cherif Bassiouni, while all sides committed war crimes during the conflict, Serbian forces were responsible for ninety percent of them, whereas Croatian forces were responsible for six percent, and Bosniak forces four percent. The report echoed conclusions published by a Central Intelligence Agency estimate in 1995.

By early 2008, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had convicted 45 Serbs, 12 Croats and 4 Bosniaks of war crimes in connection with the war in Bosnia.] The most recent estimates suggest that around 100,000 people were killed during the war. Over 2.2 million people were displaced, making it the most devastating conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. In addition, an estimated 12,000–20,000 women were raped, most of them Bosniak.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS

1992:

Feb 29-March 1 - Bosnia's Muslims and Croats vote for independence in referendum boycotted by Serbs.

April 6 - European Union recognizes Bosnia's independence. War breaks out and Serbs, under the leadership of Radovan Karadzic, lay siege to capital Sarajevo. They occupy 70 percent of the country, killing and persecuting Muslims and Croats to carve out a Serb Republic.

May - U.N. sanctions imposed on Serbia for backing rebel Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.

1993:

January - Bosnia peace efforts fail, war breaks out between Muslims and Croats, previously allied against Serbs.

April - Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde in eastern Bosnia are declared three of six U.N. "safe areas". The United Nations Protection Force UNPROFOR deploys troops and Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) attacks stop. But the town remains isolated and only a few humanitarian convoys reach it in the following two years.

1994:

March - U.S.-brokered agreement ends Muslim-Croat war and creates a Muslim-Croat federation.

1995:

March - Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic orders that Srebrenica and Zepa be entirely cut off and aid convoys be stopped from reaching the towns.

July 9 - Karadzic issues a new order to conquer Srebrenica.

July 11 - Bosnian Serbs troops, under the command of General Ratko Mladic, capture the eastern enclave and U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica, killing about 8,000 Muslim males in the following week. The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague indicts Karadzic and Mladic for genocide for the siege of Sarajevo.

August - NATO starts air strikes against Bosnian Serb troops.

November 21 - Following NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic agree to a U.S.-brokered peace deal in Dayton, Ohio.

December 14 - The three leaders sign the Dayton peace accords in Paris, paving the way for the arrival of a 66,000-strong NATO peacekeeping Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia. The international community establishes a permanent presence in the country through the office of an international peace overseer.

1996:

July - West forces Karadzic to quit as Bosnian Serb president.

September - Nationalist parties win first post-war election, confirming Bosnia's ethnic division.

MAJOR PARTIES INVOLVED

Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina existed legally until co-signing the Annex 4 of the Dayton Agreement, containing the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 14 December 1995, but official documents reveal that the state existed until the end of 1997 when the implementation of the Dayton Agreement was finished and only then it fully came into effect. Most of this period is taken up by the Bosnian War, in which majority of population of two of three main ethnicities of Bosnia and

Herzegovina, namely (Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats), established entities of Republika Srpska and Herzeg-Bosnia respectively, which were unlawful and secessionist in nature hence unrecognized by international community. Informally these events were considered by nationalists as evidence that republic was left to be representative primarily of its Bosniak population, formally presidency and government of the republic was still composed of Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats along with Bosniaks. By the Washington Agreement of 1994, however, Bosniaks were joined by Bosnian Croats of Herzeg-Bosnia, which was abolished by this agreement, in support for the Republic by the formation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a sub-state joint entity. In 1995, the Dayton Peace Accords joined the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Serb entity, the Republika Srpska, from that point onward recognized formally as political sub-state entity without a right on secession, into the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia

The Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia (Croatian: Hrvatska Republika Herceg-Bosna) was an unrecognised geopolitical entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was proclaimed on 18 November 1991 under the name Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bo as a "political, cultural, economic and territorial

whole" in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.In its proclaimed borders Herzeg-Bosnia encompassed about 30% of the country, but did not have effective control over the entire territory as parts of it were lost to the Army of Republika Srpska at the beginning of the Bosnian War. The armed forces of Herzeg-Bosnia, the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), initially fought in an alliance with the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), but their relations deteriorated throughout late 1992. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared Herzeg-Bosnia unconstitutional on 14 September 1992. In early 1993 the Croat–Bosniak War fully escalated in central Bosnia and spread to Herzegovina.On 28 August 1993 Herzeg-Bosnia was declared a republic following the proposal of the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan, envisioning Bosnia and Herzegovina as a union of three republics. Its capital city was Mostar, which was then a war zone, and the effective control centre was in Grude. In March 1994 the Washington Agreement was signed that ended the conflict between Croats and Bosniaks. Under the agreement, Herzeg-Bosnia was to be joined into the Croat–Bosniak federation, but it continued to exist until it was formally abolished in 1996.

NATO

On 14 September 1995, the NATO air strikes were suspended to allow the implementation of an agreement with Bosnian Serbs for the withdrawal of heavy weapons from around Sarajevo.

Republika Srpska

During the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995 Republika Srpska was an unrecognized territory under the control of the Army of the Republika Srpska, while after 1995, it is one of two political entities composing Bosnia and Herzegovina. The borders of Republika Srpska are, with a few negotiated modifications, based on the front lines and situation on the ground at the time of the Dayton Peace Accords. As such, the entity is primarily a result of the Bosnian war without any direct historical precedent. Its territory encompasses a number of Bosnia and Herzegovina's numerous historical geographic regions, but (due to the above-mentioned nature of the inter-entity boundary line) it contains very few of them in entirety. Likewise, various political units existed within Republika Srpska's territory in the past but very few existed entirely within the region.

IMPACTS OF THE WAR

Prosecutions and Legal Proceedings:

In 25 May 1993, the UN has established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as a body of itself in order to prosecute the crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars. According to legal experts, as of early 2008, 45 Serbs, 12 Croats and 4 Bosnians were convicted of war crimes by the ICTY. The ICTY still works to find the criminals during the war, even most of the criminals are dead.

Reconciliation On 6 December 2004, Serbian president Boris Tadić made an apology in Bosnia and Herzegovina to all those who suffered crimes committed in the name of the Serb people. Croatia's president Ivo Josipović apologized in April 2010 for his country's role in the Bosnian War. On 31 March 2010, the Serbian parliament adopted a declaration "condemning in strongest terms the crime committed in July 1995 against Bosnian population of Srebrenica" and apologizing to the families of the victims, the first of its kind in the region.

CASUALITIES :

In 1991, Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH) was still one of the six constituent republics of Yugoslavia, the one having the most mixed ethnic composition. The population of Bosnian Muslims was in 1991 the largest among all ethnic groups (1.9 million, 44% of all). The second largest were the Serbs (1.4 million, 31%). Bosnian Croats (760,00) and Others (all remaining ethnicities jointly: 350,000) comprised, respectively, 17 and 8 percent of the 1991 population of Bosnia, enumerated in the census of the 31st March. All other republics had a clear majority group, for example mainly Croats lived in Croatia, and Slovenes in Slovenia. In June 1991, it was obvious that the Serbian president Slobodan Miloševic began to increase the dominance of Serbs in the former Yugoslavia. Especially three republics, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia, felt directly threatened by Serb nationalism and the perspective of Greater Serbia carved out of the

territories mainly in Bosnia and Croatia, with Slovenia providing the Serbs with cheap resources. The republics of Slovenia and Croatia were the first ones to break away from the socialist Yugoslavia, Slovenia after a short ten-day relatively painless war with the Yugoslav National Army (JNA), practically representing the interests of Serbia, and Croatia after a seven-month war with JNA and Serbia. After the recognition of Croatia by the international community and the first seven-month war episode, the Croatian war with Serbia had its continuation in the period 1992-1995, when the Croats fought for the territories they lost to the Serbs in the first months of war. Noteworthy is that the first episode of the Croatian war provided the world with the images of Croatian civilians from the towns, such as Vukovar and Dubrovnik, shelled by the Serb artillery and exposed to Serb air strikes for months in late 1991. The late stages of the war in Croatia produced quite opposite images of the Croatian Serbs brutally cleansed from the territories the Serbs acquired in the beginning of the war (the Republic of Serb Krajina and Western Slavonia). The situation in Bosnia was more complex than in Slovenia or Croatia, due to the mixed ethnic composition with two majority groups, Muslims and Serbs, and the absence of a single ethnic Muslim republic in the former Yugoslavia. If the Bosnian Muslims remained in the post-1991 Bosnia that would belong to the rump Yugoslavia, their educational or job opportunities would be severely limited by the dominance of Serbs. But breaking away from Yugoslavia put Bosnia in a particularly difficult position, as the Bosnians were left with no support other than the one expected from the international community. And the international community did not rush with the recognition of Bosnia’s independence. The EC and United States finally granted their recognition to Bosnia in April 1992, which however did not stop the Bosnian conflict. The war in Bosnia lasted until November 1995 and comprised several episodes, including such as those with Serb perpetrators and Muslim (or Croat) victims, with Croat perpetrators and Muslim (or Serb) victims, as well as with Muslims perpetrators and Serb (or Croat) victims. At one point, there was even a Muslim-Muslim conflict. All these episodes took place in various time periods and territories throughout the war lasting from April 1992 to practically November 1995. Noteworthy, the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims by the Serbs brought, in consequence, the most casualties and, most importantly, an extraordinary migration (both internal and external) of mainly Muslim population, that resulted in the dramatic changes in the size and ethnic composition of the pre-conflict population of the country. The population of Bosnian Muslims suffered the greatest losses during this war. 2 The historical background of the Bosnian war is introduced here following Chapter 9 from “A problem from hell. America and the age of genocide”, by Samantha Power (2003). 2 Even though the migration movements were the most significant demographic consequence of the Bosnian war, the subject of this article is the number of casualties of the 1992-95 conflict in Bosnia. The issue is not new, but remains unresolved until the present. This does

not mean that no estimates have been produced and presented to a broader audience. On the contrary, quite a number of, sometimes extreme, figures are available. We are however strongly convinced that none of the previously made estimates is well founded. Therefore in this article we provide a critique of a selection of the previous numbers and propose an analytical framework and a new estimate of the number of casualties of the war in Bosnia. Let’s begin by noting that among all demographic events, death occurs to everyone with certainty. Questions that remain unanswered in the course of people’s lives are when and how. Both the timing and the cause of death are strongly determined by an individual’s health and its genetic component, lifestyle, and living and working conditions. Also the demographic characteristics of an individual, such as age and sex, and the socio-economic status, have an impact on the timing of death and causes people die of. In statistical practice, it is required to describe every death by three items: date, place, and cause of death. Personal details, such as the first and family names, date and place of birth, place of residence etc. are obligatorily reported as well. A physician, other trained medical personnel, or a coroner must declare the cause of death as a medical category on the basis of the International Classification of Diseases and Conditions Leading to Death (ICD) provided by the World Health Organisation. Currently, the 10th revision of the classification (ICD-10) is used throughout the world. The ICDs allow us to distinguish between diseases, or fatal health conditions, and external causes of death (i.e. accidents). The ICD is not the only classification of diseases that exists, though it is the only one officially in use. Demographers and epidemiologists have proposed several alternative classifications, one of the most informative being the etiological classification, in which causes of death are expressed as particular lifestyles responsible for certain types of medical conditions leading to death. The best known example of an etiological cause of death is smoking behaviour, which is a widely recognised risk factor in frequent causes of death, such as cardiovascular diseases (most importantly, coronary heart disease and stroke), lung cancer, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. Analogously, drinking behaviour, improper diet, or lack of physical activity are the next best examples of etiological causes. The awareness of the existence of different classifications of causes of death is the key to the proper understanding of the total number of deaths that occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-95. Causes of death taken into account must distinguish in this case between regular causes of mortality and causes responsible for excess mortality in this period. Among the regular causes, indeed the usual disease-, ageing-, or accidents-related medical categories should be considered. Among the causes of excess mortality, we must think of exclusively conflict-related causes, in particular excess mortality of civilians due to war operations or due to harsh living and working conditions during the war. Mortality of the military personnel should be seen as a separate conflict-related category. The components of the total number of deaths in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-

95, as in any other conflict, must distinguish between the following death categories: 3 a) Regular deaths caused by disease, old age or war-unrelated accidents b) Excess deaths of civilians due to severe living conditions during war c) Excess deaths of civilians due to war d) Excess deaths ofsoldiers/other military personnel due to war 3 e) Missing persons (civilians and soldiers) The assessment of war casualties must be concentrated on the civilian victims, whose death (or disappearance) can be in a straightforward manner linked with war operations (categories b, c and e). A reliable estimate of war casualties must based on carefully selected sources that ideally should be analysed jointly at the level of individual death records. In the following parts of this article we give an overview of selected previous estimates of the 1992-95 casualties from Bosnia (Section 2), and discuss our latest estimates obtained at the Office of Prosecutor (OTP) at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, Section 3). In the final Section 4, we summarise our critique regarding previous estimates and try to formulate general guidelines as to how one should proceed in order to obtain a fair estimate of the number of war casualties for a country such as Bosnia-Herzegovina.

WHAT IS A WAR CRIME ?

What exactly are war crimes? What body of laws do they refer to and who has the right to try a suspect for such crimes?

The concept of war crimes is a recent one. Before World War II, it was generally accepted that the horrors of war were in the nature of war.

But during World War II the murder of several million people - mainly Jews - by Nazi Germany, and the mistreatment of both civilians and prisoners of war by the Japanese, prompted the Allied powers to prosecute the people they believed to be the perpetrators of these crimes.

The Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 led to 12 Nazi leaders being executed.

A similar process started in Tokyo in 1948. Seven Japanese commanders were hanged, though the Allies decided not to put Emperor Hirohito in the dock.

These trials were essentially the precedents for the cases that the modern-day tribunal in The Hague hears.

In addition, individual governments, feeling that justice has not been done, have acted on their own initiative.

This happened most famously in 1960, when Adolf Eichmann, a high-profile Nazi closely involved in the organisation of the concentration camps and the policies of the Holocaust, was tracked down in Argentina by Israeli agents.

He was kidnapped and taken to Israel where he was put on trial and subsequently hanged.

A more recent example was the 1987 trial of Klaus Barbie - a leading Nazi during the German occupation of France. Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Body of laws

Genocide, crimes against humanity, mistreatment of civilians or combatants during war can all fall under the category of war crimes. Genocide is the most severe of these crimes.

The body of laws that define a war crime are the Geneva Conventions, a broader and older area of laws referred to as the Laws and Customs of War, and, in the case of the former Yugoslavia, the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague (ICTY).

Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: "Wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including... wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, ...taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."

This, international lawyers say, is the basic definition of war crimes.

The statutes of The Hague tribunal say the court has the right to try suspects alleged to have violated the laws or customs of war in the former Yugoslavia since 1992. Examples of such violations are given in article 3:

* Wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity

* Attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings

* Seizure of, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science

* Plunder of public or private property.

The tribunal defines crime against humanity as crimes committed in armed conflict but directed against a civilian population. Again a list of examples is given in article 5:

* Murder

* Extermination

* Enslavement

* Deportation

* Imprisonment

* Torture

* Rape

* Persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds.

Genocide is defined by the tribunal as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

But the law on war crimes is continually evolving.

In February 2001, the tribunal in The Hague delivered a ruling that made mass systematic rape and sexual enslavement in a time of war a crime against humanity.

Mass rape, or rape used as a tool of war, was then elevated from being a violation of the customs of war to one of the most heinous war crimes of all - second only to genocide.

Spotting a war crime

It is not always easy to spot a war crime.

The displacement of civilians from their homes by an enemy army is not necessarily a war crime.

It can be argued that the displacement is being carried out for the protection of the civilians.

It only becomes a war crime if the expulsions can be proven to be part of campaign of ethnic cleansing or designed as a mass punishment of civilians.

Equally, is it a war crime for the air force of one country to bomb an enemy's television station because of the propaganda in the broadcasts?

Under the Geneva Conventions, this is not a war crime. Just about all aspects of a state's infrastructure - roads, bridges, power stations, factories - become legitimate targets if they might be put to military use.

Such attacks only become war crimes if the extent of collateral damage to civilians and civilian interests resulting from the attack would be excessive compared to the military advantage gained from the attack.

International court

International human rights groups have long called for a uniform and global legal system for dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Apart from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, established in May 1993, an international tribunal was established in Arusha, Tanzania, for cases resulting from the atrocities carried out in Rwanda in 1994.

Another is trying former Liberian President Charles Taylor over war crimes committed during the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Although these represent significant further steps in bringing those accused of war crimes to justice, they are, like Nuremberg and Tokyo, committed to dealing with war crimes in specific conflicts.

In July 2008, Surinam became the 107th country to join the International Criminal Court, set up in 2002 as a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity.

The United States has refused to sign the treaty, arguing the court could be used to pursue politically motivated prosecutions. Other major powers including Russia, China and India have also refused.

The question of whether international courts of this kind are political - as defendants like Slobodan Milosevic argued - hangs over all international legal institutions.

In a sense it is true that the tribunals are political since the international political will to establish and fund them has to exist before they can get to work.

Critics of international courts often argue that international justice can only be truly legitimate when all war crimes, committed by any county, come under the jurisdiction of a single international court.

At the heart of the concept of war crimes is the idea that an individual can be held responsible for the actions of a country or that nation's soldiers.

Ethnic Cleasing Begins Begins

Yugoslavia began to collapse in June 1991 when the republics of Slovenia and Croatia declared independence. The Yugoslav army, largely composed of Serbs, invaded Croatia under the guise of trying to protect ethnic Serb populations there. They took the city of Vukovar, carrying out mass executions of hundreds of Croat men, burying them in mass graves. This was the beginning of the ethnic cleansings that characterized the atrocities committed during the Yugoslav Wars.

Bosnia came next in April 1992. Following their independence, Serbian forces accompanied by Bosnian Serbs attempted to ethnically cleanse the territory of the Bosniaks. Using former Yugoslavian military equipment, they surrounded Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital city. Snipers hid in the hills and shot at civilians as they tried to get food and water. Mass executions, concentration camps, rape and sexual violence, and forced displacement were all extremely prevalent. The “siege of

Sarajevo” is considered to be one of the most dramatic and representative parts Yugoslavia’s breakup, with thousands killed over the course of nearly four years.

Attempts at mediation by the European Union were unsuccessful and the United Nations (UN) refused to intervene, aside from providing limited troop convoys for humanitarian aid. Later on, the UN tried to establish six “safe areas,” including Srebrenica and Sarajevo, but these were ineffective. Peacekeepers did not have the capabilities to truly protect the people seeking refuge there, and all except Sarajevo eventually fell under Serb control.

Genocide at Srebrenica

In July 1995, Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladic, descended upon the town of Srebrenica and began shelling it. At this point, the enclave was protected by only 450 Dutch peacekeepers armed with light fuel and expired ammunition – their force was so weak that a Dutch commander had reported that the unit was no longer militarily operational a month prior. The peacekeepers requested support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but were denied. Srebrenica fell to the Serbs in one day.

Mladic expelled 25,000 women and children from the town, while his forces tried to hunt down approximately 15,000 Bosniak men who had tried to escape to safety in central Bosnia. Up to 3,000 were killed, either by gunshot or by decapitation, while trying to escape. Many Bosniaks sought refuge at a UN base in nearby Potocari, but were not safe there for long.

Serb forces caught up with them by the afternoon and the next day, buses arrived at Potocari to take them away, again separating the children and women from the men. Serb troops forced the Dutch peacekeepers to hand over their uniforms and helmets so that they could use them to lure civilians out of hiding and trick them into thinking they were headed to safety. At the end of the four day massacre, up to 8,000 men and teenage boys had been killed, and many women were subject to torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence. Thousands were buried in mass graves. In order to conceal their crimes, Serb forces dug up the original graves of many victims and moved them across a large piece of territory.

There were clear indications that an attack at Srebrenica was being planned, yet the international community did not equip the peacekeeping forces there with the support necessary to protect the thousands who either lost their lives or were terrorized. The atrocities committed at Srebrenica are considered to be the worst on European soil after the Holocaust.

Recognizing Genocide

While both the ICTY and ICJ have considered the atrocities committed in the former Yugoslav region to constitute genocide, this has not been a shared sentiment around the world. Notably, both Russia and Serbia have denied that the Srebrenica massacre amounted to genocide.

In July 2015, the UN Security Council held a meeting in preparation for the 20th anniversary of Srebrenica, and reportedly Serbia asked Russia to veto a draft resolution that would formally condemn the massacre as genocide. Russia used its veto to kill the resolution, stating that calling the crimes a genocide would prompt further tensions in the region. Serbia has acknowledged that the crimes at Srebrenica occurred but has never used the word genocide to describe them. Arrests for Srebrenica-related crimes were not made in Serbia until March of 2015. Denial also runs strong in the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, with the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik called Srebrenica, “the greatest deception of the 20th century.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power was a journalist in Sarajevo when the attack on Srebrenica occurred and a first-hand witness to the suffering that the war caused. In response to Russia’s veto, she said, “It mattered hugely to the families of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide. Russia’s veto is heartbreaking for those families and it is a further stain on this Council’s record”.

Denialist rhetoric trivializes the experiences of victims and survivors, and minimizes the true weight of what occurred during the 1990s. Reconciliation cannot be possible without recognition of the crimes committed. Nothing can bring back their loved ones or erase their trauma, but by acknowledging these events as what they are, the survivors can begin the healing process and find closure for what they experienced.

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