Srebrenica Genocide
Thousands of men and boys left Srebrenica on 11 July 1995 and made their way towards Tuzla, which was controlled by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the following days they were repeatedly ambushed, separated into groups and captured. Hundreds were killed and left in the forest; many more were taken prisoner and executed. Men and boys who had stayed in Srebrenica were detained by Serb forces and were executed. The bodies were buried in numerous mass graves in eastern Bosnia.
The perpetrators later used heavy machinery to remove the bodies from primary mass graves to secondary sites, sometimes 50 kilometers from the original execution sites. This orchestrated effort to conceal evidence of the crimes resulted in bodies being disarticulated. Typically, human remains of individual victims of the Srebrenica Genocide have been found in three to four different mass graves, often many kilometers apart.
Over the course of the last 25 years, advances in forensic science have increased the technical capacity to locate missing persons, including by identifying human remains though DNA testing. This has been embraced by the scientific community across the Western Balkans including Bosnia and Herzegovina. ICMP continues to process DNA samples from the region. At the same time, it is fostering DNA testing capacity in domestic laboratories, which will ensure the development of sustainable domestic forensic science capacities to account for those who are still missing.
