The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, was the July 1995 genocidal killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. It was mainly perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska under Ratko Mladi?, though the Serb paramilitary unit Scorpions also participated. The massacre constitutes the first legally recognised genocide in Europe since the end of World War II.
Before the massacre, the United Nations (UN) had declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica a “safe area” under its protection. A UN Protection Force contingent of 370 lightly armed Dutch soldiers failed to deter the town’s capture and subsequent massacre. On 13 July peacekeepers handed over some 5,000 Muslims sheltering at the Dutch base in exchange for the release of 14 Dutch peacekeepers held by the Bosnian Serbs.
A list of people missing or killed during the massacre contains 8,372 names., 6,838 genocide victims had been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves;Some Serbs have claimed the massacre was retaliation for civilian casualties inflicted on Bosnian Serbs by Bosniak soldiers from Srebrenica under the command of Naser Ori?. These ‘revenge’ claims have been rejected and condemned by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the UN.
In 2004, the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY ruled the massacre of the enclave’s male inhabitants constituted genocide. The ruling was also upheld by the International Court of Justice in 2007. The forcible transfer and abuse of between 25,000 and 30,000 Bosniak Muslim women, children and elderly, when accompanied by the massacre of the men, was found to constitute genocide. In 2002, the government of the Netherlands resigned, citing its inability to prevent the massacre. In 2013, 2014 and 2019, the Dutch state was found liable by its supreme court and the Hague district court, of failing to prevent more than 300 deaths. In 2013, Serbian president Tomislav Nikoli? apologised for “the crime” of Srebrenica but refused to call it genocide.
In 2005, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the massacre as “a terrible crime – the worst on European soil since the Second World War”, and in May 2024, the UN designated July 11 as the annual International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.
