11 July is observed by the United Nations as the International Day of Reflection and Remembrance for the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.

In 2025, the world observes the 30th anniversary of that tragic event. Over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys lost their lives. Thousands of others fled their homes. Families and communities suffered complete destruction.

The war that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia lasted from 1992 to 1995. It claimed over 100,000 lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Most of the victims were Bosnian Muslims. More than two million people faced displacement.

In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces entered Srebrenica. The United Nations had previously declared the town a safe area under Resolution 819. Despite this, the forces carried out mass executions of men and teenage boys. They also forced about 25,000 women, children, and elderly people out of the enclave.

This massacre stands as the largest in Europe since the Holocaust. Only a few events have received legal recognition as genocide. However, both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have defined the Srebrenica massacre as genocide.

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