By Munira Subašić and Kathryne Bomberger
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide – the premeditated and organized murder of more than 8,000 men and boys in July 1995, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH). This is a time to reflect on the horror of what happened in Srebrenica – it is also a time to consider the steps that States must take to locate and identify victims of such atrocities.
There are important lessons from the long and difficult process of addressing the Srebrenica Genocide that can have a bearing on events taking place today – in Gaza, for example, in Ukraine and Yemen and Syria and elsewhere.
In Srebrenica, many of the killers believed their actions would be obscured by the fog of war. But the fog of war has lifted – enough to raise the possibility that no one, not even a head of state, has sufficient legal or political protection to act with impunity.
The same judicial process that brought war criminals to justice following the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia must continue to be applied to those who are committing war crimes today.
When we first began to work together almost three decades ago with families of the missing often uniting across ethnic, national and religious lines from Srebrenica to Belgrade, the prospects of overcoming political hurdles to find the truth and secure a measure of justice seemed small.
But justice has a way of moving resolutely forward – even if it is slow.
In the autumn of 1995, the perpetrators of the Srebrenica Genocide attempted to conceal the evidence of what they had done, using bulldozers to remove human remains from mass graves and rebury them in secondary and tertiary graves miles from the crime scene.
This was followed by a decade of defence through denial: no body, no crime – a strategy often adopted by regimes that use enforced disappearance as a means of neutralizing opponents.
However, in the case of Srebrenica, the perpetrators’ defence evaporated when families of the victims launched a determined and successful effort first to locate and then to identify the bodies of their relatives.
Excavating hundreds of mass graves as part of judicial investigations and identifying the remains of victims using DNA allowed the truth to emerge in its full horror; and it served as the basis for bringing perpetrators to justice.
In 2000, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) began gathering DNA profiles from families of the missing in the former Yugoslavia, including families from Srebrenica. Using newly developed database technology, the profiles were compared with DNA extracted from human remains found in mass and clandestine graves. ICMP made the first match – of a 15-year old boy from Srebrenica – in 2001. Following this, the number of persons identified, not only from Srebrenica but from the region as a whole, increased at a remarkable rate – and not only were victims identified: through the use of new technologies it became possible to link these victims to the original crime scene.
More than 20,000 relatives of those who disappeared during the Srebrenica Genocide have provided genetic samples and relevant information about their missing relatives, enabling the conclusive identification of more than 7,000 Genocide victims. Identifications are still being made.
Families have lobbied successfully to establish institutions and mechanisms to sustain the process of accounting for the missing and securing justice for victims and survivors. For the first time in history, survivors – especially women – have led a movement that has transformed personal grief into organized, civic action on a national and international scale.
The Mothers of the Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves together with many other organizations across the region, many of them led by women, have become symbols of dignity, resilience, and justice. They have crossed ethnic and religious divides to advocate for victims’ rights and accountability. Their capacity to mobilize moral authority has helped to secure political attention and public support in ways that defied expectations and reshaped traditional power dynamics in the Western Balkans.
Roughly 75 percent of the 40,000 people who went missing during the conflicts in the Western Balkans have been accounted for, including more than 90 percent of the Srebrenica victims. This would not have been possible without the leadership, courage, and determination of women survivors. It was their persistence that resulted in scientific evidence being gathered, preserved, and presented in war crimes cases.
Just as justice would not have been possible without the active engagement of civil society, it would not have been possible without broad post-Cold War support for a rapidly evolving rules-based international order.
ICMP has contributed forensic evidence in more than 35 war crimes trials, in BIH courts and at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Twenty individuals were prosecuted at the ICTY for crimes related to Srebrenica, and 57 have appeared before the BIH State Court. More than 50 people have received prison sentences for their role in the Genocide.
The number of convictions is small – compared to the scale of the crime – but the process has shown that impunity can be systematically dismantled through the application of forensic science, popular will, and dedicated courts.
The mass identification of victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina has demonstrated that the fog of war cannot completely obscure the truth – and when the truth is recovered, justice becomes possible. Yet, the significant erosion of the rules-based global consensus in recent years may have given those who are now committing war crimes and crimes against humanity a renewed sense that they can act with impunity. On the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide it would be a disaster of historic proportions if this turned out to be the case.
Munira Subašić is President of the Movement of the Mothers of the Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves
Kathryne Bomberger is Director-General of the International Commission on Missing Persons
