The United Nations General Assembly Resolution on Srebrenica and the Struggle Against Genocide Denial

Introduction

Above a bustling plaza on the tourist-filled Knez Mihailova Street in central Belgrade, a large block of white text is sprawled across a building’s facade. The graffiti, which appeared in late May 2024, declares that “the only genocide in the Balkans, [sic] was against the Serbs”.^[1] This piece of nationalist “street art” offers a generative glimpse into Serbia’s reaction to the United Nations General Assembly’s (UNGA) adoption of Resolution A/RES/78/282, which designates 11 July as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica (hereinafter: the Resolution).^[2]

Passed on 23 May 2024, the Resolution condemns Srebrenica genocide denial and the glorification of figures convicted of crimes in former Yugoslavia. It was sponsored by the delegations from Germany and Rwanda, as well as 32 cosponsors that included the United States, France, Britain, and Italy, in anticipation of the 30th anniversary of Srebrenica in 2025. The Resolution also requested that the UN Secretary-General provide resources to promote education and awareness about the genocide, amid a climate of nationalist revisionism.^[3]

The victims of the Srebrenica genocide received the Resolution enthusiastically. Nura Begović, president of the Mothers of the Enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa (Majke enklave Srebrenica i Žepa), lauded the effort, stating: “With the vote, they [the UN] corrected the[ir] part of blame for what happened in 1995 to us. They could have prevented this from happening, and we would have our loved ones today. We want to hail the vote and to tell the world that this is how you seek justice and truth.”^[4]

Notably, the Resolution’s text never mentions the words “Serb”, “Serbia”, or “Serbian”, maintaining its focus on the genocide’s victims. It goes so far as to explicitly individualize genocide, and does not employ the language of collective responsibility. Nonetheless, according to the governments of Serbia and the Republika Srpska, the latter being one of the two entities that make up Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Resolution embodied an attack on the dignity of the Serbian people by labeling them a “genocidal nation”. In a speech addressing the UN General Assembly ahead of the 23 May vote, the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić decried the Resolution’s alleged political divisiveness, asking: “Why is the resolution being adopted if we are talking about individual legal responsibility?”^[5]

However, contrary to the sentiments expressed by Vučić, the Resolution did not arise out of thin air, nor is its purpose obscure and contradictory. In accordance with the UN’s mission to combat impunity and promote accountability through the paradigms of institutionally administered memory and awareness, similar resolutions were passed to honor the victims of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In 2015, the UNGA also passed a resolution that established 9 December as the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime, and in 2022 it condemned Holocaust denial through a similar measure.^[6] Therefore, a UNGA vehicle honoring the memory of Srebrenica and condemning the denial of its classification as genocide is a consistent expression of UN action, and reflects a general trend in its memory and human rights regime.

Yet, at the UN, efforts to memorialize Srebrenica have faced unprecedented political resistance relative to other mnemonic resolutions (Mehler 2017), and denial has continued. Genocide survivors, international institutions, human rights and transitional justice practitioners, lawyers, and memory scholars, among others, have widely documented this phenomenon. Meanwhile, the Srebrenica Memorial Center has published five annual reports tracking incidents of denial within Bosnia, Serbia, and the wider region. The most recent report captured a concerning, but perhaps to be expected trend – denial of the genocide in Srebrenica increased again, coinciding with the debate and adoption of the Resolution.^[7]

There has been little scholarly coverage of the Resolution since its adoption in May 2024. Dragan Dakić wrote about its potential legal implications and possibilities for its external implementation (Dakić 2024). This work, however, enlists the Resolution as a point of departure to analyze the global dimensions of Srebrenica denial and the nationalist agendas shaping the Serb backlash to genocide remembrance. In the following, we work toward providing a comprehensive account of the Resolution’s political and mnemonic context and aftermath.

The Specter of Srebrenica Denial

The denial of what happened in Srebrenica began immediately after the crime was committed in July 1995. The Bosnian Serb authorities framed the operation in the town as being focused purely on military and resistance targets, not civilians. These pretextual justifications for the application of violence were clearly employed to appease UN officials and assuage the fears of the genocide’s eventual victims. Constructing the capacity for widespread denial and equivocation after facilitating the genocide, Bosnian Serb military personnel later dismembered the victim’s bodies and scattered their remains across dozens of graves in eastern Bosnia. The bodies were difficult to identify, enabling continued doubt as to the legitimacy of evidence linking the victims, who were eventually exhumed, to the killings in Srebrenica. This narrative pervades into the present, despite the successful and revolutionary technological advances made in accurately identifying the remains of the genocide’s victims.^[8]

Since 2020, the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Potočari has documented annual incidents of Srebrenica genocide denial.^[9] In 2021, the Center documented 234 instances of genocide denial in regional public and media discourse.^[10] The following year, 693 acts of genocide denial were identified, marking a substantial increase in recorded incidents.^[11] While the Center’s 2023 report measured a significant decline in traceable acts of genocide denial,^[12] the most recent report revealed a threefold increase in incidents from 2023, with a specific escalation in the months during which the UNGA was considering the Srebrenica commemoration resolution.^[13] Aligned with the disconcerting trends identified by the Center, Srebrenica denial’s worrying proliferation has attracted significant political and academic attention.

Geographically speaking, Srebrenica denial is most prevalent across Republika Srpska and the Republic of Serbia. In both of these entities, denial of the genocide in Srebrenica is essentially tantamount to official policy and is a well-established and entrenched cultural norm. It is fomented and orchestrated by elites – collaboratively by leading members of both governments – and embraced and reproduced among certain right-wing and nationalist political groupings. Denial as a nationalist political project is uplifted and supported institutionally, with a constellation of government programs, laws, funding streams, and events constructed to perpetuate genocide revisionism. All the while, on the streets of Belgrade and along roadways in Republika Srpska, murals celebrate the genocide’s perpetrators and demean its victims. Troublingly, the specter of genocide denial and perpetrator glorification is present among certain groups of young people for whom the memory of Srebrenica has been suppressed or erased in school.^[14]

Since the Dayton Accords ended the Bosnian War in November 1995, significant bureaucratic resources in Republika Srpska have been deployed to produce alternative knowledge which contradicts the judicially established facts of Srebrenica. In 2002, the Republika Srpska Government Bureau for Relations with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) published a document titled “Report about Case Srebrenica” [sic] which denied that any massacre occurred in the town in 1995.^[15] In 2004, a different report was adopted which condemned the massacre at Srebrenica and affirmed the number of those killed.^[16] However, this report was revised in 2010 and disavowed in 2018 in a resolution by the National Assembly of Republika Srpska.^[17] The following year, the government of Milorad Dodik established the Independent International Commission for Investigating the Sufferings of all Peoples in the Srebrenica Region in the Period from 1992 to 1995, which has been criticized by 31 international experts on the conflict for disseminating falsehoods in denial of the genocide. The Commission’s report denied the genocide, framing the Bosniaks as the primary aggressors in the conflict, and claiming that the victims of the Srebrenica genocide were not innocent civilians.^[18]

In 2021, widespread genocide denial in Republika Srpska led the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Valentin Inzko to introduce criminal penalties for both the genocide denial and perpetrator glorification into Bosnia’s Criminal Code. While rarely enforced, the law against denial signifies the urgent need to mitigate denial in Bosnia. In reaction to the anti-denial amendments, Dodik precipitated a major political crisis in which he openly called for Republika Srpska’s secession from Bosnia (Barton Hronešová and Hasić 2024). Dodik himself is one of the most prominent purveyors of Srebrenica denial, despite having once said: “I know perfectly well what happened: genocide happened in Srebrenica. That was the ruling of the Hague tribunal, and this is an undeniable legal fact.”^[19] But just over a decade later, dozens of complaints have been filed against him under the law banning genocide denial.^[20] He has claimed that the genocide “did not happen”, is part of a core “fabricated myth” constructed by Bosniaks, and “the greatest deception of the 20th century”.^[21] While sometimes using his platform to perfunctorily lament the wrongdoing in Srebrenica, Dodik remains adamant that the massacre was not a genocide, while venerating the Bosnian Serb officials convicted at the ICTY and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT). He has even gone so far as to dedicate a student dormitory to Radovan Karadžić.^[22] Thus, as Bosnian Serb scholar Olivera Simić notes, “Dodik has created [the] political and social space in which genocide denials are normalized” (Simić 2024, 6).

The extent of denial in Republika Srpska stretches well beyond the work of a single individual. As noted above, significant administrative effort is invested in working to counter Srebrenica’s judicially established history, and bring about deeper ethnic divisions. The entity of Republika Srpska has also begun efforts to physically erase the memory of Srebrenica from space, and therefore public conscience. A telling example of this phenomenon is efforts to revitalize the infamous Kravica warehouse – where more than 1,000 executions took place during the genocide – and transform it into an entrepreneurial hub.^[23] The direct erasure facilitated by this renovation indicates a commitment to purge the remnants of Republika Srpska’s culpability.

In the neighboring Republic of Serbia, Srebrenica denial constitutes an essential element of political nationalism. To this day, no Serbian government has accepted the ICTY’s classification of Srebrenica as a genocide. In 2010, the Serbian Parliament narrowly passed a resolution condemning the “crime” committed in Srebrenica and apologizing to the victims for not preventing the massacre. This resolution did cite the 2007 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which affirmed Srebrenica’s genocidal nature. It was adopted under pressure from the EU and represented a targeted domestic effort on the part of then-President Boris Tadić to improve Serbia’s prospects for EU accession (Dragović-Soso 2012).

Nonetheless, explicit genocide denial has been widespread among members of the current Serbian government under President Aleksander Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SNS). Under their leadership, in 2016, the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia amended its criminal code to provide legal cover to those denying the Srebrenica genocide.^[24] The amendments criminalized denial of genocides affirmed by the International Criminal Court (ICC), implicitly excluding denial of the Srebrenica genocide, as perpetrators had been convicted in the ICTY and elsewhere. The government also refuses to remove denialist graffiti, and has deployed resources to protect street art which honors Srebrenica’s perpetrators (Moskovljević 2022, 24 and 31). Multiple members of government have used their public appearances to malign claims of genocide in Srebrenica as a conspiracy against the Serbian people, while other legislators, including the president of the Serbian Radical Party (Srpska radikalna stranka, SRS) Vojislav Šešelj, author state-funded books promoting denial of the genocide.^[25]

Scholars have observed that the denial of genocide has expanded to encompass open celebration of the crime. The term “triumphalism”, coined by scholar Hariz Halilović, captures this dimension of the denial, which extends into the glorification of perpetrators and appreciation of the impact of their violence. The tropes of this phenomenon are as clear as they are disturbing. For example, soccer hooligans in Serbia have chanted “knife, wire, Srebrenica” (nož, žica, Srebrenica) in celebration of the genocide.^[26] Serbian lawmaker Vladimir Đukanović described the massacre as a “brilliantly conducted military operation” which resulted in “liberation”.^[27] Popular folk songs mock the genocide’s victims and call for further violence against Bosniaks, and other ethnic groups.^[28] Celebrations were also organized in Republika Srpska to coincide with commemorations of Srebrenica on 11 July. At these celebrations, posters of perpetrators and racist chants were omnipresent (Karčić 2022). A week before the passage of the Resolution in May 2024, members of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina were photographed saluting a monument to Ratko Mladić.^[29] As denialism has expanded to include glorification and outright triumphalism, victims are subject to more extensive humiliation. The incendiary rhetoric of genocidal celebration, paired with the effects of genocide denial, heighten the risk of further violence.

Denial of the Srebrenica genocide has a significant international dimension. The Srebrenica Memorial Center’s reports have documented extensive revisionism from politicians in neighboring countries, including Croatian president Zoran Milanović.^[30] Acts of denial are also often observed in neighboring Montenegro.^[31] Several scholars of the Holocaust were enlisted by the Serbian government or Republika Srpska to publish work that undermines Srebrenica’s classification as a genocide, including Gideon Greif, Raphael Israeli, Ephraim Zuroff, and Yehuda Bauer (Subotić 2022). Their work was effectively co-opted in service of a nationalist political project which advances Srebrenica denial. Austrian writer Peter Handke, a notorious Srebrenica denier who claimed that Bosniaks brought about the massacres at Srebrenica themselves, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (Paul 2024). The Nobel Committee voraciously defended their decision to honor Handke despite his undisguised Islamophobia and overt sympathy for Slobodan Milošević.^[32]

Srebrenica remembrance has been a challenging endeavor amid these conditions of erasure and the lack of coherence in Bosnia’s memory landscape (Duijzings 2007). Remembrance of Srebrenica is deemed “divisive” and political, but it is the project of genocide denial which has disrupted reconciliation and furthered ethnic division. Put differently, those who deny degrade the genocide’s memory in favor of a revanchist, nationalist politics.

UN Failure to Commemorate Srebrenica

The UN bears significant responsibility for failing to prevent the genocide in Srebrenica. As noted in a Human Rights Watch Report issued after the massacre, UN peacekeepers “were unwilling to heed requests for support from their own forces stationed within the enclave, thus allowing Bosnian Serb forces to easily overrun it and – without interference from UN soldiers – to carry out systematic, mass executions”.^[33] Just before the UN’s failure to prevent the Bosnian Serb offensive in Srebrenica, the UNSC-authorized ICTY began prosecuting those accused of committing atrocities across the former Yugoslavia. Beyond the obligation to hold the perpetrators of major international crimes accountable, the ICTY’s work was informed by didactic aspirations. Constructing a historical account of mass atrocities would, in the imagination of those who supported the tribunal’s establishment, “bring an end to pernicious forms of denialism about wartime atrocities, which had been pervasive during the 1990s conflict itself and have persisted long after the conflict ended” (Orentlicher 2020, 315). As denial has endured beyond the end of the ICTY’s mandate, so too have attempts by the UN to shoulder the responsibility to combat denial and commemorate the Srebrenica genocide.

In 2007, the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Christian Schwartz-Schilling urged the body to establish an “International Day of Srebrenica”.^[34] His intervention followed the ICJ’s ruling in Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, which affirmed that the Srebrenica massacre was a genocide and held in plurality that Serbia had breached the Genocide Convention’s mandate by failing to prevent the atrocity.^[35] Schwartz-Schilling was concerned about the “radical rhetoric” in reaction to the Court’s opinion, which “poisoned the political environment”.^[36] He warned of the “ruthless political manipulation [of Srebrenica] by irresponsible politicians” and the continued denial of the genocide despite verdicts classifying the atrocity as such, which threatened to undermine Bosnia’s fragile postwar peace and stability.^[37] However, the UN did not heed Schwartz-Schilling’s request. For nine years, the institution did not consider a commemorative resolution marking Srebrenica and specifically affirming the ICTY’s findings.

It was not until 2015 that the UN re-engaged in the work of passing a Srebrenica-focused resolution, in anticipation of the genocide’s 20th anniversary. It is likely that this was imagined as the “logical follow-up” to the commemorative resolution marking the Rwandan genocide of 1994 (Mehler 2017, 618). The United Kingdom (UK), with the support of Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, and the United States, drafted Resolution S/2015/508 at the UNSC. The initiative sought similar objectives to those in the document which would eventually be passed by the UNGA in May 2024, but also focused on the UN’s shortcomings and particular responsibility to learn from Srebrenica. Foregrounding transitional justice aspirations, the UNSC initiative recognized the plight of the victims on all sides of the conflict in Bosnia, including in Srebrenica. This provision was responsive to Serbian concerns that the resolution “singled out” Serbia and erased recognition of Serbian victims in the war. Additionally, the resolution described the “acceptance of the tragic events at Srebrenica as genocide” as “a prerequisite for reconciliation”. It also condemned genocide denial, couching its harms in terms of the distress denial levies on victims, and urged states to develop educational initiatives on the Srebrenica genocide.^[38]

Russia proposed an alternative resolution at the UNSC, which contained no mention of Srebrenica as a genocide, instead advancing a broad condemnation of all crimes committed in Bosnia. Negotiations proceeded between Russia and the UK, as well as other sponsoring nations, prior to the vote on 8 July 2015. These fraught conversations caused a multitude of delays before the text’s final consideration.^[39]

The governments of Serbia and Republika Srpska launched an aggressive campaign against the vote. As they had in 2024, here too they promoted a narrative whereby the UNSC resolution declared Serbs to be a “genocidal people”, maligning the Serbian community writ large.^[40] Serbian president Tomislav Nikolić sent letters to UNSC member state leaders personally requesting that they oppose the initiative due to its potential consequences (Mehler 2017, 618). The trope of political divisiveness featured prominently among those opposing the resolution, who warned of its potential detriment to reconciliation in Bosnia and the absence of local unanimity as to the legal status of Srebrenica as an international crime. Russian newspapers, for example, promulgated this narrative, as state outlets ran headlines such as “Serbs are a genocidal nation and Serbia must admit it – this is the latest monstrous resolution on Srebrenica from London.”^[41]

It is unclear whether these efforts resulted in abstentions or rejections of the resolution, but the support of Russia was sufficient to foreclose the initiative’s success. Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin described the resolution as “not constructive, confrontational and politically motivated”.^[42] Aligned with the framing embraced by Vučić and Nikolić, Churkin spoke of concern that the resolution “would be counterproductive and lead to greater tension in the region”.^[43] Absent from Churkin’s statements, or the Russian counter-resolution, was condemnation of genocide denial, perpetrator glorification, and revisionism. Nor was nationalist denial cited as a possible catalyst for social division and reparative regression. Predictably, Russia deployed its veto power to prevent passage of the resolution. The resolution received ten affirmative votes, with four other state parties to the Security Council abstaining.^[44]

In the aftermath of the resolution’s defeat, Serbian president Nikolić celebrated the allyship of Russia, claiming that the Russian government had prevented “a stain being put on the whole Serbian nation in an attempt to declare a genocide”. “Russia has shown and proved that it is a true and honest friend”, he said.^[45] When Russia’s UN Ambassador Churkin died suddenly in February 2017, the newly elected Serbian president Vučić, while on a visit to Moscow, awarded Churkin a posthumous medal for preventing Serbs from being declared a genocidal people by the UN.^[46] And during a Russian state visit to Belgrade in 2019, Vučić commended Putin for preserving Serbia’s public image.^[47] In 2024, Serbia would once again rely on Russia’s international leverage to undermine the UN’s recognition of the Srebrenica genocide.

The UN General Assembly Resolution of 2024

Against all these odds, Bosniak organizations have long called for the UN to affirm Srebrenica as a genocide through a formal resolution. The US Congress and Senate recognized the Srebrenica genocide by resolution in 2005; the EU Parliament in 2009; and other national parliaments worldwide have done the same.^[48] In a memory landscape steeped in nationalist contestation and equivocation, and with the continued degradation of Bosnian Muslim victims, affirmations of Srebrenica’s history possess meaningful normative possibilities. Accordingly, the organization Mothers of Srebrenica in particular has advocated such an initiative. They first called for the UN to establish an International Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide in 2019, during a visit to the Council of Europe.^[49] Similarly, in April 2024, the Srebrenica Memorial Center called for this international organization to pass a commemorative document.^[50]

Specific calls for the UN to adopt a Srebrenica resolution commenced about a year before it came to fruition. In July 2023, Dunja Mijatović, then Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, cited the Mothers of Srebrenica’s demand and called for the “international community to stop looking the other way” and recognize 11 July as an official day of remembrance.^[51] Mijatović’s charge was grounded in the rise of genocide denial in Bosnia. According to her, establishing “a day of remembrance would show that the international community stands on the side of the truth and in solidarity with the survivors and families of the victims”.^[52] This sentiment was echoed by former general counsel of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) Menachem Rosensaft in September 2023.^[53] Several months later, in March and April 2024, the initiative was taken to formulate and announce the Resolution at the UNGA.

The Serbian Campaign Against the Resolution

The attack on the Resolution replicated many of the themes discursively deployed to stir up nationalism since the 1990s. Couching the Resolution within preexisting narratives of international anti-Serbianism, Bosniak maliciousness, enduring national vulnerability, the illegitimacy of international institutions, and a politicized conceptualization of Serbian victimhood provided an accessible template to legitimize a national campaign against it (Wygnańska 2021; Volčič 2005; Lerner 2020). Relatedly, the Resolution provided the leaders of Serbia and Republika Sprska with the means to divert domestic attention away from institutional corruption and bureaucratic neglect.^[73] It also nicely coincided with the rerun of internationally scrutinized local elections in the Serbian capital, Belgrade.^[74]

In March 2023, both the Serbian government and leaders of Republika Srpska initiated a direct, public attack on the Resolution. A series of independent remarks – offered by Milorad Dodik, Aleksandar Vučić, Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia Aleksandar Vulin, and speaker of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska Nenad Stevandić, respectively – laid the foundations for the campaign against the Resolution’s adoption. On 10 March 2024, President of Republika Srpska Dodik claimed that the Resolution put the survival of the Bosnian state at risk.^[75] Meanwhile, Dodik himself was sanctioned by the United States and widely condemned for attempting to sabotage the Dayton Agreement.^[76] That same day, Stevandić asserted that the Resolution’s goal was the destabilization of Bosnia.^[77] Several weeks later, President of Serbia Vučić warned that should the Resolution be adopted, Bosniaks would demand, in response, both the abolition of Republika Srpska and compensation from Serbia.^[78] He warned of “hard days” ahead for Serbia.^[79] Likewise, Deputy Prime Minister Vulin cautioned that the Resolution was the “finalization of the conspiracy against the Republika Srpska and the Republic of Serbia”.^[80]

In a series of posts on the platform X, Dodik framed efforts to commemorate Srebrenica as political violence against the Serbian people, and a conspiracy created by the West to undermine Bosnia’s political order.^[81] As his rhetoric escalated, Dodik linked the Resolution to an impending political crisis, claiming that the UN’s initiative would render it impossible for Serbs to live in the state of Bosnia.^[82] He called for Serbian independence from Bosnia, claiming that the Resolution was incompatible with the status quo existence of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Serbs in one political entity.^[83] However, while painting secession as having been provoked by the Resolution, Dodik had in fact been pursuing secessionist objectives long before the UNGA initiative commenced (Toal 2013). The United States, as well as the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Christian Schmidt, have documented Dodik’s attempts to subvert the state and bring about crises which undermine it.^[84]

Bosnian Serb officials were also adamant that the Resolution violated the constitutional framework of Bosnia – a position embraced by the Serbian government and the Russian delegation. In particular, Bosnia’s UN representative Zlatko Lagumdžija was accused of unilaterally advocating the Resolution, without proper authorization under the constitution. In the postwar constitution that structures Bosnia’s governance, the Presidency consists of three members, one from each ethnic group: Bosniak, Serb, and Croat.^[85] Under the collective powers of the Presidency, stipulated in Article V of the constitution, it shall have responsibility for conducting the state’s foreign policy.^[86] The argument that Lagumdžija was not backed by the three members of the Presidency was advanced by its Serb member, Željka Cvijanović, in letters to all UN member states.^[87]

On 18 April 2024, two major events in Republika Srpska furthered the Bosnia-based campaign against the Resolution. A rally was held in Banja Luka, led by Dodik but attended by Serbian officials including the speaker of the Serbian Parliament Ana Brnabić. At the rally, Dodik admitted that Srebrenica was a “mistake” and a “huge crime”, but simultaneously denied the genocide and threatened to secede from Bosnia if the Resolution was passed.^[88] Additionally, on the same day, the National Assembly of Republika Srpska adopted a strongly criticized report which claimed that half as many Bosniaks were killed in Srebrenica as is actually the case, and that the majority of them were combatants.^[89] In Serbia, however, that same month, Serbian civil society actors and human rights organizations – including the Humanitarian Law Center (Fond za humanitarno pravo), the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, and Women in Black Serbia – called on their government to support the declaration and “stop with the practice of glorifying convicted war criminals, while denying the crimes, victims, and judgments of international courts”.^[90]

Nonetheless, in the days preceding the vote, Serbian officials in both Bosnia and Serbia engaged in symbolic measures to escalate the stakes of the Resolution. In fact, survivors of the genocide lamented “the denial of genocide on a daily basis”, which permeated the days leading up to the UNGA’s consideration of the Resolution.^[91] In Republika Srpska, Bosnian Serbs held a government meeting in Srebrenica, the location of the genocide, where they called for separation from the other Bosnian entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the meeting, Republika Srpska’s Prime Minister Radovan Višković claimed that some of those buried in Srebrenica “are [actually] alive”.^[92] In Serbia, the government launched a media campaign in opposition to the Resolution. Videos were shared from government accounts titled “We are not a genocidal nation. We remember […] Proud Serbia and Srpska.”^[93] Similar messages were broadcast on the Belgrade Waterfront apartment complex, overlooking the Sava River, and in Srebrenica itself.

The day before the vote, Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Đurić penned an opinion piece in the Brussels-based European branch of the US daily Politico, where he articulated his state’s rationale for opposing the UNGA effort. The piece was tonally distinct from the more antagonistic rhetoric which constituted most of the attack on the Resolution, as Đurić claimed “only political extremists reject the view that unspeakable crimes were committed in Srebrenica” and “only the most callous of people are unwilling to acknowledge and honor those victims”.^[94] Taken at face value, Đurić thereby implicitly labelled several members of both Serbia’s and Republika Srpska’s governments callous extremists. He published a similar piece in the US-based internet news portal RealClearWorld.^[95] As explained above, the presidents of the Republika Srpska and Serbia, Milorad Dodik and Aleksandar Vučić, have both defended and platformed perpetrators of the genocide, mourned their convictions at court, and fostered the sociopolitical space for Srebrenica genocide denial and the minimization of the crime. When Vučić traveled to New York to attend the UNGA vote in person, he did so with the blessing of Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije, who also condemned the resolution.^[96] Departing from Belgrade, Vučić declared that he was “going to New York to fight for Serbia”.^[97]

The Global Politics of Srebrenica Denial

In the following, we examine the global politics of Srebrenica denial in order to contextualize the vote on the Resolution at the UN. While Vučić and Serbia’s political infrastructure writ large stewarded the attack on the Resolution, efforts aiming to render the document politically controversial relied upon the work of other UN member states. Several states geopolitically aligned with the Republic of Serbia, or seeking to avoid and delegitimize charges of genocide in international forums, opposed the Resolution or promoted genocide denial in related public statements. Broadly speaking, a widespread increase in Srebrenica denial accompanied the Resolution’s introduction and debate.

Reminiscent of the futile 2015 UNSC effort to commemorate Srebrenica as a genocide, Russia assumed a principal role in opposing the UNGA Resolution and mobilizing states against its adoption in 2024. The Russian government has thus long operated as a central force in the struggle over Srebrenica’s memory, deploying its “soft power” to deny the genocide and retain its favor and influence in the Balkans. The allyship between Russia and Republika Srpska is extensive: Milorad Dodik has visited Russia several times since Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine commenced in February 2022, and Putin was gifted a medal of honor in Republika Srpska in early 2023.^[98] In 2021, a report by Balkan Insight documented how Russian-government backed organizations contributed to events that deny the Srebrenica genocide.^[99] Political scientist Sead Turčalo, too, accentuated the commitment to enforcing ahistorical narratives that is shared by Putin’s government and the current leaderships in Serbia and Republika Srpska, a commitment that has only heightened since Russia has leveraged curated tellings of history to justify its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.^[100]

Serbia and Republika Srpska relied on this relationship when rebuking the Resolution and working to prevent its passage. On 22 April 2024, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia announced the country’s strict opposition to the initiative, noting that Russia “will never support such a resolution”.^[101] He argued that the Resolution violated the Dayton Agreement, because Republika Srpska did not consent to its introduction. After the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency, Željka Cvijanović, wrote to the UNSC warning of the Resolution’s injurious potential, Russia requested a convening of the Council to discuss the situation. The UNSC met for an emergency meeting on 30 April 2024, where extensive debate unfolded as to the merits of the Resolution and the role of the Western states in Bosnia. In the meeting, Cvijanović, Serbian Foreign Minister Đurić, and Russian representatives attacked the Resolution, establishing a front against what they saw as the further destabilization of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state and foreign interference. They painted Bosnia as a state on the verge of implosion, arguing that the Resolution threatened to accelerate the state’s collapse. While the Resolution was the central topic of discussion, the role of the High Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina was also contested.^[102]

Russia deployed its geopolitical strength to round up votes against the Resolution, as well as abstentions, as we will illustrate in the following. On the day of the vote, 23 May 2024, Russia predictably voted against. However, unlike in 2015, its effort to prevent the Resolution’s passage failed. During the UNGA debate prior to the vote, Russia, speaking in opposition to the Resolution, reproduced many of the same arguments that were advanced by Serbia and Republika Srpska. When the Resolution passed anyway, Permanent Representative Nebenzya described the result as “shameful” and lauded Vučić’s efforts, who, he claimed, had “made it absolutely clear […] what lies behind proposing this draft and adopting it”.^[103] The following day, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the document as “politicized and anti-Serb” in nature.^[104]

While it is no surprise that Russian ally Belarus voted against the Resolution, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary also proved to be a loyal ally as the only European Union state to oppose it. Milorad Dodik had visited Budapest about a week before the UNGA’s final vote on the initiative. Dodik’s Republika Srpska enjoys substantial financial and political support from Hungary, and Serbia and Hungary also boast a close relationship, with Orbán representing one of President Vučić’s key European allies. On 15 May, Hungary announced their disapproval of the Resolution. Acknowledging Srebrenica as a “tragedy”, Péter Szijjártó, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, argued that the Resolution “intentionally or unintentionally would demonize the entire Serbian nation”.^[105] Other Hungarian officials, too, blamed the international community for escalating tensions in Bosnia, while stopping short of condemning Dodik’s blatant corruption and propagation of genocide denial.^[106]

Another EU state, Bulgaria, was almost convinced to walk back their support for the Resolution but ultimately voted affirmatively. This surfaced due to leaked correspondence between Bulgarian then-Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev and the Bulgarian Ambassador to the UN Lachezara Stoeva, hours before the vote. Glavchev sought to pressure Stoeva to abstain from the vote, most probably passing onto his counterpart pressure he had received from neighboring Serbia or Russia.^[107]

China also voted “No” on 23 May. While condemning the events in Srebrenica as “deplorable”, the Chinese delegation was concerned about the controversial reception of the Resolution in Bosnia. In May 2024, as the UNGA debated the Srebrenica commemoration effort, Chinese President Xi Jinping was received by President Vučić in the Serbian capital.^[108] A few weeks before Jinping’s visit to Belgrade, in April, Chinese officials met with Milorad Dodik in East Sarajevo, where they allegedly assured Republika Srpska leaders that China would align with Serbia and Republika Srpska in objecting to the Resolution.^[109]

Markedly, Israel’s UN delegation was absent in the Assembly on 23 May and thus did not vote on the Resolution. At the time of the Resolution’s introduction, Israel was already facing accusations of genocide in proceedings at the ICJ due to its wanton violence in Gaza after the Hamas attack in Israel on 7 October 2023.^[110] The ICC recently issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leader Mohammed Deif (who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in August 2024), charging each with war crimes and crimes against humanity.^[111] Israel has long taken a hostile position toward the UN, and toward the UNGA in particular (Herzog 1978). This antagonistic relationship has escalated over the past year.^[112]

Avoiding the vote did not stop representatives of the Israeli government from commenting on Srebrenica and the Resolution. The Jerusalem Post, one of Israel’s flagship English-language newspapers, provided Dodik with an exclusive interview where he maligned the Resolution, denied the genocide, and advanced Islamophobic conspiracies.^[113] In a highly publicized diplomatic calamity a few weeks before the vote, Israel’s Ambassador to Serbia Yahel Vilan denied the Srebrenica genocide. Vilan told Sputnik, a Russian state-owned outlet, that “Srebrenica should not be called genocide” as doing so “diminishes the importance of that term”.^[114] Bosnian Foreign Minister Elmedin Konaković condemned Vilan’s remarks, as did the Srebrenica Memorial Center and Jewish leaders in Bosnia and the West.^[115]

Israel also boasts diplomatic and military ties with Serbia, and historically to Republika Srpska as well. In 2016, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the containment of documents which would have revealed the details of Israeli weapons exports to the Bosnian Serb military during the genocide in 1995, and the 1990s in general. The exports supposedly occurred well after the UNSC had placed an arms embargo on the warring parties.^[116] The Vučić government in Serbia, on the other hand, has armed Israel’s military at increased rates since 2023.^[117] In advance of the vote, Israel was additionally courted by Republika Srpska: The Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency Željka Cvijanović wrote to Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan, explicitly requesting that Israel oppose the initiative.^[118] Israel did not partake in the vote. The Netanyahu government made no statement following the Resolution’s passage that would have clarified its position.

These illustrations of both explicit and tacit support for genocide denial should not conceal the support the Resolution received. In its final form, it reflected a consensus among the majority of the voting parties that the killings in Srebrenica constituted a genocide, and embraced the obligation to mitigate the revisionist glorification of the perpetrators and the belittling of the crime. Virtually all Western states supported the Resolution, as did a multitude of African, Southeast Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern ones. The entirety of the member states which once constituted Yugoslavia, apart from Serbia, voted in favor of the Resolution, suggesting a regional consensus as to the genocide and imperative to protect its memory.^[119]

There was also a particularly high volume of abstentions on the Resolution.^[120] Abstaining countries voiced a multitude of reasons for their abstention, including frustration with the Resolution’s drafting process, the absence of consensus in the UNGA, and a refusal to align with the United States and Europe’s perceived hypocrisy and selective condemnation of violence.^[121] For example, in explaining their abstention, Mexico’s delegate acknowledged Srebrenica’s genocidal character while lamenting that the Resolution was not drafted and adopted by consensus. Brazil’s delegate raised similar concerns.^[122] The Maldives also abstained due to a desire to avoid shifting focus away from the atrocities in Gaza.^[123] Beyond the Maldives, several other states pointed to parallels between Srebrenica and Gaza.^[124] Thus, it appears that many of the states who abstained from the Resolution did not do so because they reject Srebrenica’s qualification as a genocide. And while we are wary of advancing conclusive assumptions as to the reason behind each state party’s abstention, the Resolution’s passage suggests that Srebrenica denial has limited purchase within the international community.

Backlash and Aftermath

Backlash to the Resolution unfolded immediately. In response to its adoption, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, draped in a Serbian flag, bowed down, began weeping, and then stood up and raised a Serbian three-finger salute.^[125] After the vote, he spoke to the media, reiterating the tenets of the campaign against the Resolution and praising the unified stance of the Serbian people against it.^[126] In Belgrade, government ministers watched the vote together, wrapped in Serbian flags.^[127]

While mourning the Resolution’s passage and deploying it as pretext to escalate tensions and proliferate fear and anxiety, Serbia and Republika Srpska simultaneously hailed the matter as a victory.^[128] Given the high volume of abstaining parties, and 22 member states not casting a vote, Vučić and Dodik argued that a true majority was not achieved, and Serbia had successfully defeated the West. Describing Serbia’s reaction to the Resolution, Tatjana Papić observed Vučić’s reception as a hero upon his return to Serbia. Allies of his government lionized his dedication to Serbia before the “hostile” UN. Car processions were organized across the country.^[129] The government praised the member states that had opposed the Resolution by rotating their names on a screen in Belgrade. Pro-government press in Serbia embraced Vučić’s characterization of the events.^[130]

The Resolution offered Serb officials, both in Republika Srpska and in Serbia, ammunition to promote their vision of a “Serbian world” (Sprski svet). This “Serbian world”, popularized by the Vučić government since 2021,^[131] is understood by many to reflect a contemporary manifestation of Slobodan Milošević’s “Greater Serbia” in the late 1980s, which would precipitate the war in Bosnia and the dissolution of Yugoslavia (Ljubomirović 2022; Lukić 1994). Some scholars describe the ideology as an extension or duplication of the concept of a “Russian world” (Rússkiy mir), which is the underlying thought guiding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.^[132] Proponents of both “Greater Serbia” and the “Serbian world” believe in one unified Serbian state which connects Serbs across the Balkans, and includes the merging of Republika Srpska and Serbia. According to this belief, Serbian unity is required to preserve Serbian nationhood and peoplehood, in order to withstand a presumed multitude of converging, existential threats from Serbia’s neighbors and the international community (Goldberg 2024, 3; Wygnańska 2021).

The leaders of both Serbia and Republika Srpska have situated the Resolution within the ideological paradigm of the “Serbian world”, framing it as a reflection of the latent external threat to Serbs. Shortly before the passage of the Resolution, the leadership of Republika Srpska promoted a secession plan, announcing that the Serbian entity would seek “disassociation” from Bosnia. Republika Srpska’s prime minister Radovan Visković announced the plan, linking it implicitly and explicitly to the UNGA vote on the Resolution.^[133]

In July 2024, Serbia hosted the first so-called All-Serb Assembly (Svesrpski Sabor), which provided a platform to situate the Resolution in the confines of rising Serbian chauvinism, and functioned as a direct response to its adoption.^[134] The All-Serb Assembly, stewarded by presidents Dodik and Vučić, constituted festivals on the streets of Belgrade and a collection of high-level meetings between Bosnian Serb officials and the Serbian government. The multi-day event also saw the adoption of a “Declaration on the Protection of National and Political Rights and the Joint Future of the Serb People” on 8 July 2024.^[135] The Declaration draws on the thinking behind a “Serbian world” in promoting the unification of Serbian lands across borders, aiming “to achieve an ever-closer harmonization between RS and Serbia through a distorted interpretation of the Dayton system”, and capitalizing on the narrative turned self-fulfilling prophecy that the Resolution undermines the political order in Bosnia.^[136] The Declaration in fact explicitly disavows the Resolution, claiming that it “attempted to collectively blame the entire Serb people”.^[137]

The Resolution, and Srebrenica’s memory in general, thus appear to contribute to the ongoing revitalization of Serbian nationalism, which threatens to further destabilize the Balkans. Members of both Serbia’s and Republika Srpska’s government have continued to enlist the Resolution in blaming Bosniaks and the West for undermining Bosnia’s post-Dayton constitutional structure, and for allegedly attacking the Serbian people writ large. States like Russia continue to escalate the tensions by uplifting Srebrenica genocide denial. As nationalism surges, the rationales and vocabularies which have structured the concerted attack on Srebrenica remembrance continue to foment division and disparage the victims of genocide.

Conclusion

In her book The Past Can’t Heal Us, Lea David argues that “external mandating of memory often produces a backlash and, contrary to the expected outcome, reinforces nationalist infrastructures” (David 2020, 189.) The nationalist attack on the UNGA’s commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide appears to reify this claim. The objective of this article is to highlight the role the Resolution has been assigned by those who are actually working toward destabilizing Bosnia and furthering the Serbian government’s nationalist project. This is not the UN, nor is it the “West”, nor any other “external mandate of memory”. Moreover, our article also reveals that the international community has proven susceptible to the efforts to render the discussion about the genocide against the Bosniaks controversial, even though the legal rulings are clear and have left no doubt about the nature of the crime.

The adoption of UNGA Resolution A/RES/78/282, which designates 11 July as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide, represents an important development in global efforts to confront genocide denial and honor the victims. The vehement opposition from Serbia, Republika Srpska, and their international allies highlights how historical narratives can be weaponized to reinforce nationalist ideologies. Framing the Resolution as a collective indictment of Serbs, which it clearly is not, these actors strategically deployed a rhetoric of victimhood and external interference to deflect responsibility, mobilize domestic political support, and even advance secessionist agendas. The global geopolitical dimensions of such weaponization, notably the role of states such as Russia, Hungary, and China, further illustrate how the politics of memory are deeply intertwined with contemporary power dynamics and regional alliances.

Ultimately, we are convinced that Resolution A/RES/78/282 will, in its future implementation, help to institutionalize a day of remembrance of the Srebrenica genocide. This in turn will firmly bolster Srebrenica’s position in the global knowledge and memory landscape.