July 11, 2022
Cited article by Reuters
HRRC remembers and honors the victims of the Srebrenica genocide 27 years ago. While Dutch forces were not the ones committing the massacre, the Netherlands' admission of failure to take appropriate measures to prevent the massacre is a significant step towards accountability and ensuring nations take appropriate measures to protect victims of conflict and genocide.
Article Summary
For the first time, the Dutch government has issued an apology for the role in this massacre that Dutch peacekeepers played. Near the end of the 1990's Balkan wars, Dutch peacekeepers were unable to prevent Bosnian Serbs from overrunning a U.N. declared "safe haven", resulting in the massacre of approximately 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.
While the ultimate blame rests on the Bosnian Serbs, Dutch courts have ruled that the country's peacekeeping force were partially responsible, and the country has paid compensations to survivors. The massacre has been ruled as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia, and labeled as the single worst atrocity during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War in which roughly 100,000 people died.