Srebrenica: ten years on, the nightmare continues
06-07-2005 Photo gallery
In Bosnia & Herzegovina, thousands of families remain in anguish, not knowing what became of their loved ones after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. The ICRC and other organizations continue their efforts to discover the truth.
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In mid-July 1995, in the fourth year of a war that had seen many atrocities and caused great suffering among all communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, thousands of Muslim women and children were forced to flee from Srebrenica, in Serb-held territory, to the town of Tuzla. For days, ICRC staff helped the most vulnerable of them to cross the no man’s land separating the front lines and on to a local airfield, where – traumatized – they gave details of missing husbands, brothers, fathers, sons …
The Dayton accord stipulated that the former warring parties work with the ICRC to establish the fate of all who had gone missing throughout the conflict – Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. Working as a neutral intermediary, the ICRC established a working group to bring the parties around the table; it was their responsibility to find out what had happened to the thousands of missing people and share the information, to end the agony of families – who have a right to know.
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