Quo vadis, Srebrenica?

Memorial of the genocide in Potočari, near Srebrenica – Michael Büker (Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Chiara De Luca

Last May, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declared 11 July to be observed annually as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. Several UN member states, including Serbia, opposed the resolution, criticizing the alleged politicized nature of the text. In the weeks ahead of the vote at the UN, Serbia’s top officials argued that the resolution would deepen Bosnia’s ethnic divisions and reopen old wounds.

Although there is not such a thing as a hierarchy of pain, recognition of collective responsibilities for atrocities committed during the Bosnia war (1992-1995) should not brush aside the scale and cruelty of what happened in Srebrenica. The UNGA resolution can make a difference in societies emerging from conflict, such as Bosnia. It embodies a commitment to justice, which, in validating people’s experiences and grief, can foster healing and a newer sense of collective identity.

It is now 29 years since the small eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica experienced the most atrocious episode of violence in Europe since World War II – a crime ruled as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice. Amidst the conflict in Bosnia in July 1995, the army of Republika Srpska (one of the two administrative entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina), under the orders of General Ratko Mladić and political leader Radovan Karadžić, killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the UN-designated ‘safe’ enclave of Srebrenica over the course of a few days.

At just over two pages, Resolution A/78/L.67/Rev.1, proposed by Germany and Rwanda, received 84 votes in favor, 19 against, and 68 abstentions. The resolution condemned any denial of the genocide in Srebrenica and any actions glorifying convicted war criminals. It also requested UN Secretary-General to establish an outreach programme, “The Srebrenica Genocide and the United Nations”, ahead of the 30th anniversary in July 2025.

Serbia claimed that the resolution imposes collective guilt on the Serbian people. In fact, at no point does the resolution link the genocide to any state. It is not directed against Serbians or any other people; it does not make any allegation of responsibility or complicity either. It only briefly mentions the individual perpetrators of the genocide in Srebrenica.

The resolution is a short pedagogical text about remembrance and memorialization of the victims, and prevention efforts. The assertion that the content of this non-binding resolution is or can be used politically by UN member states against Serbia or Republika Srpska lacks credence. Its sponsors include Chile, Malaysia, Poland, and Bulgaria, which belies claims that the resolution is an instrument of hostility or western plot.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, called the resolution a “threat to peace and security”. Republika Srpska’s president Milorad Dodik, who has never conceded that what happened in Srebrenica was a genocide, threatened once again to secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Detractors claimed that the resolution was not a product of the Balkan states. But the process was sufficiently consultative, e.g. Montenegro’s suggestions about accountability for the genocide being individualized so that it “cannot be attributed to any ethnic, religious or other group or community as a whole” were integrated in the final text. Ultimately, all Balkan states voted in favor with the exception of Serbia and Montenegro.

The wounds in Bosnia-Herzegovina have never truly healed. The UNGA resolution and Serbia’s reaction to it highlight how urgent it is to memorialize the past in a country where survivors and many perpetrators, who were never brought to justice, live side by side, and where everything, including schooling, remains divided along ethnic lines.

In a recent op-ed Serbia’s foreign minister Marko Djuric said that “any U.N. resolution on the suffering in the Balkan wars should respect the conflict’s more than 100,000 victims”. Djuric has a problem with the fact that the resolution would “memorialize and single out one group”.

Memorializing the past in Bosnia cannot be realised if any attempt to remember the sheer cruelty of what happened in Srebrenica is discounted. Remembering Srebrenica should not sow divisions today given that the event was legally documented and adjudicated. With the UNGA resolution, the international community sends a clear message that Republika Srpska and neighbouring allies’ frequent denial and distortion of the Srebrenica genocide, exaltation of war criminals, and hate speech have no place in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Germany and Rwanda hailed the resolution as a “crucial opportunity to unite in honouring the victims and acknowledging the pivotal role played by international courts”. National and international courts and truth commissions have often missed the chance to integrate memorialization into their initiatives or treated it as an afterthought, but it remains key to transitional justice processes. The UNGA resolution on Srebrenica shows a path forward where multilateral efforts make space for a new “imagined community” in Bosnia – to borrow political theorist Benedict Anderson’s words – that is more inclusive, anchored in adherence to international human rights law. In preserving established facts of the past, the resolution makes a modest but meaningful contribution to preventing the occurrence of such horrific episodes in the future.

Chiara De Luca is a human rights researcher based in the UK. 22 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org