International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica

Your Excellency, Mr. Denis Bicirovic, Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Your Excellency Emil Dinko-Naković, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Your Excellency Mr. Zlatko Lagomudžija, Permanent Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations. Dear survivors of the prison isra genocide and their families, Excellencies and friends. It's my great honor to welcome you today in my capacity as the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide to the official observance of the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. This is the second annual observance organized by the Srebrenica Genocide and the United Nations Outreach Program established by UN General Assembly Resolution 78282 and co-hosted with the Department of Global Communications under the leadership of Her Excellency USG Melissa Fleming. And it is the 31st anniversary of that week of 11 July 1995, of the day which will forever lay heavily on the collective conscience of the international community, the United Nations, and the modern history of our world. On behalf of all who are here today with us, and of all those who join us virtually from around the world, I express our deep gratitude that families of victims and survivors will address us on this solemn occasion. We acknowledge and appreciate the immense courage it takes to share your stories, your memories, and the memories of your loved ones with us and with the world. Today we remember and honor your loved ones, the over 8,000 boys and men who were murdered on that fateful day and days that followed, and the terror and fear of women and girls forcibly displaced and tortured in the preceding days. In their memory, may I now please ask you to join me in a moment of silence and reflection. Thank you very much. Srebrenica continues to provide a warning on where the roads of hate can lead to when the world fails to act upon them. May it be recalled that this International Day and the Srebrenica Genocide Outreach Program stand as a testament to the pledge to never forget the victims of this genocide., and to honor their lives by ensuring and protecting their dignity, the dignity of human life, everywhere and for everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my honor to welcome His Excellency Ambassador Mr. Alcott Rodry, Chef de Cabinet of the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General. Mr. Rodry will deliver remarks on behalf of Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, who is unable to join us today.

Survivors, families of the victims, distinguished guests. It is for me an honour to stand with you today in remembrance of the victims of the genocide in Srebrenica. In July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, many seeking the protection of the United Nations compound in Potocari, were systematically separated from their families, executed, and buried in mass graves. Thousands of women, children, and older persons were forcibly displaced. An entire generation was robbed of its future. It was the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War. But the intention to annihilate the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica failed. The survivors, some of who— of whom are here with us today, are living proof. They have testified time and again before national and international courts. Among them, the mothers of Srebrenica have shown extraordinary courage in their pursuit of peace and justice. They have rebuilt shattered communities and raised their children and grandchildren not in hatred or revenge, but in love and in compassion, the only ground on which a grieving community can heal. Even as the pain endures. Excellencies, in 2024, this Assembly designated this International Day of Reflection and Commemoration. To observe it is to accept a duty to reaffirm the facts the courts have established, to acknowledge the suffering of the victims, and to pursue pursue accountability. This is how trust is rebuilt, peace sustained, and atrocity prevented. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice found that the acts committed at Srebrenica in 1995 constituted genocide. They also reaffirmed that responsibility for that crime is individual and cannot be laid upon any ethnic, religious, or other group or community. International law is equally clear: states have an obligation, an obligation to prevent genocide. Defending these findings against Denial and revisionism, and ensuring the voices of the victims are never silenced, is a duty that we all carry. Only by recognizing the suffering of every victim can we build the empathy on which any future must rest. That is a future with no place for genocide denial or historical revisionism. —a future where dialogue, not division, carries us towards peace. But we must also confront a difficult reality. After Srebrenica, the world once again said "Never again." Yet, as we know, hate speech is on the rise, fuelling discrimination, extremism and division. Convicted war criminals are glorified. We cannot turn away from these warning signs. We must act early, for prevention is our shared duty and our surest protection. On this International Day, I call on every Member State to uphold its shared responsibility to confront denial with truth and impunity with justice. So today we remember and honor the victims with humility and resolve. Humility before their immeasurable suffering. Resolve that such horror will never be repeated. To the survivors and the families, we stand with you in respect and in solidarity. And I ask everyone everywhere to remember Srebrenica to listen to those who lived it, and to act on what they teach us in defense of human dignity, peace, and justice. I thank you.

Thank you, Your Excellency Ambassador Mr. L. Courtney Rutre. It is my honor now to welcome Her Excellency Miss Annalena Baerbock, the President of the 80th Session of the General Assembly. Her Excellency has recorded a message for this event. We are pleased now to share her recorded message.

Excellencies, distinguished delegates, survivors and families of the victims, we mourn the more than 8,000 men and boys who were murdered in Srebrenica, simply because they were Bosnian Muslim. The tens of thousands forcibly displaced, abused, and stripped of their homes, their loved ones, and their sense of security. The genocide in Srebrenica happened despite the promise of "never again" after the Holocaust, despite the 1948 Genocide Convention, and despite the designation of Srebrenica as a UN Safe Area. We know that we can never bring back the victims or undo the atrocities that were committed. But 31 years later, what we can do is honor the promises we made to survivors. Survivors like you. Survivors like the mothers of Srebrenica, who not only lost their sons and husbands but also endured the systematic rape of their daughters and granddaughters as part of ethnic cleansing, now living forever with these wounds of sexual violence. As every genocide is fought over the bodies of women, honouring our promises to them also means strengthening national laws and institutions with regard to women's rights and using them as a blueprint for other regions. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, legal reforms have recognized children born of wartime rape and expanded their access to social services. In some municipalities, laws removing the requirement to list the father's name on official documents have helped protect the rights and dignity of children born of conflict-related sexual violence. This is delivering on our promise of "Never Again." Upholding our promises to survivors also means upholding landmark rulings by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which helped establish conflict-related sexual violence as a crime under international law and brought perpetrators to justice, while safeguarding its legacy through the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. It also means enabling the officials of the International Criminal Court and other justice mechanisms to carry out their mandates without intimidation, threats, or interference today. And most importantly, honoring our promise of "never again" means confronting the warning signs before they escalate into atrocities. Because genocide, as we unfortunately witnessed more than 30 years ago in Srebrenica, in Rwanda, and in far too many other places, does not begin with mass graves. It begins with hatred and discrimination, with attempts to divide people into us versus them, with policies and rhetorics that strip people of their dignity. Because questioning the rights of some simply for who they are, where they come from, or which belief they practice has all the same end: dehumanization, which eventually spreads to all. So today, let us ensure that "never again" is not merely a a phrase we repeat, but a promise we uphold. A promise to remember. A promise to deliver justice and dignity to all. And a promise to act when we see the warning signs.

We thank Her Excellency for her message. I would like now to invite His Excellency Mr. Denis Picerović, Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for his address.

Excellencies, Eminences, dear mothers of Srebrenica, distinguished representatives of victims' associations, in the hall of the United Nations General Assembly, numerous decisions that have influenced the history of modern humanity have been adopted. Over the past 80 years, in this most famous hall in the world, important resolutions have also been adopted. One of them is the Resolution on the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. The adoption of this resolution is a triumph of truth, a step towards justice, and an encouragement for Bosnia and Herzegovina and the entire world. The final judgments of the highest courts of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, confirmed that genocide was committed against Bosniaks in the United Nations safe zone of Srebrenica. These are court judgments that cannot be erased from the history of mankind. The highest courts of the United Nations proved what happened in Srebrenica in 1995. The genocide committed against Bosniaks has been thoroughly documented, scientifically proven, and confirmed by court judgments. The genocide against Bosniaks is not a statistic. These are not numbers. It is about interrupted human lives. People— who had names, families and dreams. Children who never grew up. Mothers whose sons never returned home. These are only some of the consequences of the genocide committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a state in the heart of Europe. Ladies and gentlemen, States that have the strength to confront the darkest parts of their own past demonstrate responsibility towards future generations. In contrast, states that deny facts established by court judgments remain trapped in the chains of hatred and instability. Therefore, today more than ever, We must defend the integrity of international law and the authority of international institutions. We must not allow facts established by court judgments to become a subject of political calculations. The denial of the genocide against Bosniaks is an anti-civilizational act. It is an insult to the dead and a new threat to the living. Why is it important for the United Nations to commemorate the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the Genocide in Srebrenica? The significance of these days lies not only in affirming the truth, but also in its preventive dimension. It reminds us that the obligation to prevent genocide does not begin at the moment when weapons speak. The prevention of genocide begins much earlier, in the educational process, in the culture of remembrance, in the normative and institutional protection of human dignity, as well as in countering hate speech, discrimination, and dehumanization. We must strengthen the culture of remembrance Remembrance is not a burden that divides nations. Truth is the foundation upon which lasting peace is built. Without truth, there is no trust. And without justice, there is no reconciliation. Ladies and gentlemen, the Greater Serbian ideology and policies that led to genocide have not prevailed. War criminals failed to achieve their goals. They have failed to achieve their goal because the truth lives on. They have failed to achieve their goal because the Mothers of Srebrenica preserved the dignity of the victims and persevered in the struggle for truth and justice. They have failed to achieve their goal because there are judgments of the highest international courts. They have failed to achieve their goal because there is a resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica. They have failed to achieve their goal because today the truth about Bosnia and Herzegovina and Srebrenica is safeguarded by people throughout the world. Remembrance of Srebrenica is not merely a duty to the victims.— it is a responsibility towards future generations. New generations have a key role in building a better future. Young people must learn about facts based on judgments and evidence. We must all be aware that remembrance is not about turning to the past. It is the most responsible form of care for the future. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you, Your Excellency, Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for your address. After the war ended, survivors returned to Srebrenica to seek any information on their missing family members and to bury in peace those whose lives were taken. They stayed in Srebrenica to build the memorial center, to preserve the memory of this genocide, to warn of the perils of hatred, and to rebuild their lives. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to present to you for the first time the Memory Keepers of Srebrenica, a documentary produced by the United Nations on the people who returned back to Srebrenica to work tirelessly to preserve the facts of the past in order to ensure a future in which it can never be repeated. We'll screen the documentary in two parts which will transport us to the memory of Srebrenica. Let's begin, please.

My name is Almaša Salhović. I was 8 years old when I survived the genocide in Srebrenica. From my family, my brother was killed in genocide. My other relatives, uncles, both from my mother's and father's side, were killed in genocide, making total 8,372 victims of genocide in Srebrenica who were killed in July 1995. The stories are different, but somehow they're all the same. And I firmly believe that when you remember, it helps you heal. It helps your family heal. Just a few years back, we started talking about that. We started sharing what we remember, what we find most difficult that we experienced. I specifically chose Trevenson Memorial as the place where I started working 5 years ago because I always wanted to give a piece of me to memorialization, to remember. Every time I talk story about my brother, about my family, I kind of see myself talking the stories of all of us. And for me, it is not possible to imagine myself doing something else.

It didn't happen overnight. It took the events that happened before July 1995, before the final genocide stage. Here in the Memorial Centre, we focus on the education to make people know that something like this happened in the middle of Europe. At the end of the 20th century, and actually that's the signal that this can happen everywhere and to anyone if we don't prevent that.

This is part of our history and my obligation to talk about it, to talk about genocide in Srebrenica and everything we survived here in Srebrenica. And it's not just my personal story, it's a story of the thousands of people who were here during the siege of this town, especially with these events who took the place in July 1995 here in Potocari. Here on the main road, there was, uh, the checkpoint when they, uh, separate men and boys, and later on many of those people, they were separated here and they were killed.

We escaped from Srebrenica between 1992 and 1995, but in 2003 I decided to come back to Srebrenica and to try to find a way how to live here again. It was not easy. But the first and main reason to come back was the cemetery. You know, most of us who decided to return, we were thinking, okay, we have to stay closer to our dearest, to finish the identification process, to bury them here in the Memorial Centre and to have a place to visit them. This is why also the justice was important for giving some answers to us and giving us the reason to be able to separate the war criminals from those who did nothing wrong. So that's the way to give us a chance to live together.

Your Excellencies, dear friends, the aftermath of the genocide in Srebrenica left thousands of people —mainly women and their children—who survived the genocide against all odds to rebuild their lives in the shadow of the horror that happened to them. With tremendous courage and determination, they decided not to stay within that shadow. Today, in the United Nations General Assembly Hall, we are reminded and we commend the courage of the women and survivors who refused to let the world forget their loved ones, who sought and secured justice, and who rebuilt their communities. It is my profound honour to invite Ms. Amina Sinanović to address the General Assembly on behalf of the survivors of the Mothers of Srebrenica

Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Amina Sinanović. I am the daughter of men whose life was taken not only by bullets, but also by the betrayal of the world that had promised protection. I am the granddaughter of men stolen by genocide. I am the niece of an uncle stolen by genocide. I am the daughter of men of mother who did everything in her power to make sure that although genocide stole my brother's childhood and mine, our smiles and our dreams survived. I was 5 years old when my father said goodbye to me. I cannot remember the sound of his voice. I cannot remember the warmth of his embrace. I cannot remember the colors of his eyes, as every daughter should. What I do remember is war. I remember fear. I remember smoke. I remember spending the night on the cold ground outside the United Nations base in Potocari. I remember women crying. I remember people running. I remember confusion. But above all, I remember absence. I do not know what it feels like to have a father. I often imagine what our conversation would have been like, what he would have told me, whether he would have been proud of the woman I have become. These are the questions genocide leaves behind. Questions that no child anywhere in the world should ever have to ask. In July 1995, my father entered the forest hoping to reach safety, not knowing that he was beginning a journey from which he would never return. Before he left, he embraced my mother, my brother, and me. To my mother, he said only a few words: "Take good care for the children." These were the last words she ever heard from him. She kept that promise. She raised my brother and me on her own. She carried grief that would have broken many people. Yet she never allowed hatred to erase us. She chose dignity over revenge, hope over despair, life over darkness. In ocean of sorrow, she built islands of hope for my brother and me. Today, I understand that my mother did not simply raise two children. She saved two lives. Everything I am today, everything I stand for, and everything I speak about is rooted in her love and her strength. My father, Muriz, was murdered on July 13, 1995, in their house in Kravica, where thousands of lives and dreams were destroyed. He was only 32 years old. While children my age around the world were learning about life. I was learning about absence. I was learning what grief looks like when it becomes a part of who you are. For many people, Srebrenica is history. For me, it is every day of my life. It is an invisible wall that stands between me and my father, a wall built by hatred and inhumanity. Years later, Investigators returned something that had belonged to my father. Not his whole body, not justice, only a small cigarette case. It was found beside his remains in secondary mass grave. Imagine living your whole life with one small object as the one only thing left of your father, a cigarette case. That is all genocide left me. It does not end when the killing stops. It steals the future. It steals the embraces you will never receive. It steals the words you will never hear. It steals the memories you will never have the chance to create. It leaves into questions that will never be answered. In children who learned what grief is before they even truly learned what life is. 31 years later, I stand before the United Nations, no longer as a frightened 5-year-old girl who survived Srebrenica, but as a woman carrying the voices of those who never had the chance to grow up. As I stand here, in this place, where people expect protection, justice, and hope, I ask, how do I explain to the child who still lives within me that the world did not do enough? The pain carried by my mother, my brother, and me is not ours alone. It's also a burden carried within this building where the decision that could have saved lives came too late. 31 years after the genocide, we continue to witness attempts to deny the fact established by international courts. Today, genocide is denied in my country. War criminals are glorified. Facts established by international courts are questioned. When you deny genocide, you do not deny only a historical fact. Every act of the genocide denial is another shot fired in that warehouse in Krawica. That is why genocide denial is not merely a political position. It is not simply the absence of empathy. It is a systematic attempt to erase the truth of what happened. The hardest truth is that those who committed genocide and those who continue to glorify both the crime and its perpetrators still live freely among us. While we continue searching for the remains, bones of our loved ones, so that we may finally lay them to rest with dignity, those who deny genocide continue to enjoy social acceptance and political power. The silence of international community gives more strength to those who hope that with time and repeat lies, they can erase the truth about July 1995. Silence has consequences. It always has. I call upon the world to stop looking away whenever genocide is denied, because genocide denial is the continuation of genocide. Today, I want to thank all member states that support the United Nations General Assembly resolution establishing International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of— the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. For survivors and families of the victims, the resolution is much more than a document. It tells us that truth matters, that justice matters, that our loved ones have not been forgotten. But remembrance alone is not enough. Remembrance must always be accompanied by responsibility. But remembrance alone is not enough. Remembrance must always be accompanied by responsibility. As a survivor, I must say that the resolution alone does not give me a sense of security, nor does it provide the hope and reassurance it should. Resolution is an important step, but for survivors, remembrance without actions can never be enough. Standing here today in the heart of the United Nations, I cannot ignore another painful truth. The murder of my father is not only this family's tragedy, it's not only the tragedy of thousands of families, it's also the failure of the international community. A failure to protect thousands of innocent people in the area that the United Nations itself had declared a safe zone. I'm not asking the world to carry my pain. I'm not asking it to carry— I'm asking to carry its responsibility. We cannot change history, but we can learn from it. The only question is whether we are willing to learn. Today, I do not stand before you asking for sympathy. I ask only that the truth be defended, that the fact established by international courts be respected, that genocide denial be confronted whenever it appears, because Srebrenica is not the story of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Srebrenica is a warning, a warning of what happens when hatred becomes acceptable, when lies replace truth. When the world looks away, when human beings are reduced to number, because my father was never a number. He was a 32-year-old man. He loved, he dreamed, he believed that his children deserved peace. Behind every name engraved on the white gravestones on the Srebrenica Memorial Center lies an entire world, a family, a childhood, dreams, a future that was stolen. Today, I also want to pay tribute to the mothers of Srebrenica and mothers of Podrinje. They transformed unimaginable pain in extraordinary strength. Their words broke the silence. They never allowed the world to forget. They showed the world that dignity can survive even genocide. I am proud of every survivor who found the strength to be witnesses. I am proud to all those who fight against forgetting every single day. And I am proud to be part of that struggle. Perhaps I couldn't change what happened to my father, my grandfather, and my uncle, but through my work, through my voice, I will do everything I can to make sure that what happened to my father never happens again. Not to my brother's son, Amin and Fatih, and not one day to my own children. I can speak in their name of those who genocide took from me. I can preserve their memory. I can pass on the truth to the generation that will follow because remembrance is not only about the past. It is a promise to the future. A promise that truth will never surrender to lies. A promise that justice will never surrender to indifference. A promise that no child anywhere in the world will ever again have to stand where I once stood. May remembrance always be stronger than hatred. May truth always be stronger than denial. And may humanity always be stronger than in the press. Thank you.

I thank Ms. Snanovich for her moving testimony and powerful message. It is thanks to your voice and the voice of your generation that the eternal message of the mothers and of survivors will carry on. And as we've seen in the documentary. Importantly, it is also through the work of the survivors who came back to Srebrenica to embroider their memory of their loved ones in every fiber of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, which now stands as a beacon of remembrance and fight against genocide denial. It is the work of dedicated people, like Mr. Hasan Hasanović, a historian and curator. It is my honor to invite Mr. Hasanović to address the General Assembly on behalf of the survivors and the Memorial Center.

Mr. President of the General Assembly, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Hasan Hasanović. Today I stand before you as a survivor of the Srebrenica genocide and as a representative of the Srebrenica Memorial Centre. 31 years ago, I was 19, trapped in what the United Nations had declared a safe area. Before the war, I lived a simple life in a village near Srebrenica. I walked to school with my twin brother, Hussein. We shared our childhood, our dreams, and our hopes for the future. Like so many like others in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we believed our lives would be shaped by opportunity, not by war. When the conflict began, my family became refugees in our own country. We sought safety in Srebrenica along with tens of thousands of others. But Srebrenica was not safe. For more than 3 years, we lived under siege. We endured hunger, shelling, disease, and constant fear. Yet we held on to hope. When the United Nations declared Srebrenica a safe area in 1993, we believed the world had not abandoned us. We were wrong. In July 1995, the safe area collapsed. More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were systematically murdered. While thousands of women and children and elderly people were forcibly expelled. I was 19 when I joined the column of men and boys trying to reach free territory through the forests. My father, my twin brother Hussein, and I began that journey together. Within hours, we were separated. I was— it was the last time I saw either of them alive. For days, I walked through the forests filled with ambushes, artillery attacks, executions, and unimaginable suffering. At one moment, I came within meters from Serb soldiers. I turned and ran. I had gone days with almost no sleep, little food, and almost no water. Fear was all that kept me moving. I survived. My father did not. My twin brother did not. Years later, after their remains were recovered from mass graves, I buried my father and my twin brother with my own hands. Nothing could prepare me for those moments. No brother should have to bury his twin. No son should have to bury his father after searching for his remains in mass graves. Today I speak not only for them, but for all of those who were denied the opportunity to to tell their own stories. Today, I serve as, as the head of the oral history program at the Srebrenica Memorial Center. Our mission is to preserve the truth about the genocide through survivor testimony, research, education, and remembrance. Every testimony we record protects a human story from being reduced to a statistic. It is our answer to denial and forgetting. The facts about the Srebrenica genocide have been established beyond doubt. International courts, including the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice, have ruled that genocide was committed in Srebrenica. Yet genocide Denial continues. Why? Because denial is not only about the past, it is about the future. It seeks to erase truth, undermine accountability, and shape how future generations understand history. This is why remembrance matters. Remembrance is not about remaining trapped in the past. It is about protecting the future. It means recognizing hatred before it becomes prosecution, recognizing dehumanization before it becomes violence, and defending human dignity wherever it, it is threatened. Peace is not something we inherit automatically. Peace must be chosen and defended every day. Today, I ask the international community to continue supporting education, remembrance, and the fight against genocide denial. Listen to survivors while we are still here. Protect historical truth. Support institutions that preserve memory. Help ensure that future generations understand not only what happened in Srebrenica, but why it happened. The victims of the Srebrenica genocide were not numbers. They were fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. They were students, teachers, workers, musicians, athletes, and dreamers. Their lives mattered. Their stories matter. And our responsibility to remember them matters. 31 years after the genocide, Bosniaks who returned to Srebrenica and Eastern Bosnia still do not live true security. Too often they face discrimination and exclusion. Young people grow up without the full recognition of their history, language, and equal rights. This is not only the legacy of the past, it is part of the present. I survived the genocide, but survival is not the end of the story. What matters now is what we choose to do with memory. By remembering together, by defending truth, by standing against hatred and denial, we honor not only the victims of the Srebrenica genocide, but also the values that unite us as human beings. Thank you.

I thank Mr. Hasanović for his powerful testimony and tireless work with the Srebrenica Memorial Center. It can note And it will never be easy to share your testimonials and your pain with the world. But it is essential, not only for remembrance, but for pursuing and ensuring justice. Let us return to Srebrenica with part 2 of our documentary to also hear how judicial accountability serves to protect the facts and to counter genocide denial.

Justice is a precondition for reconciliation, and justice because you need to know the truth. You may think about forgiveness, but to forgive, you need to know what happened. If you don't establish which are the facts, facts that happened in a certain situation, it's almost impossible to imagine a real process of reconciliation. We need to know what was the truth. We need to know what happened. We need to know what was done by certain persons if we want not to repeat that. So this is why the work of these tribunals have a direct impact in how the society can process what happened in the past. A place like the Srebrenica Memorial is key to preserve the memory of what happened, and we need to make this record accessible to the communities, to the new generations who don't really know what happened and sometimes don't have the whole information. And this will be for the future a good example of how in International justice can achieve results and can be useful in places where terrible things happened.

Here you can see we have personal belongings of the victims of genocide in Srebrenica. We are collecting personal items. As you can see, You can see here we have personal items who are found in the mass graves together with the bodies of the victims. You can see this boot, actually it belongs to my cousin. He was a 16-year-old boy when he was killed during the genocide. His two brothers were killed during the genocide. A genocide.

You know, when you lose somebody, you deal with the loss. What scares me the most is that people deny it. Generations younger than mine are growing today with that false narrative that genocide did not occur, that war crime did not occur, that people who were killed here were just soldiers. Here we deal with the facts. We deal with the narrative that we remember. We deal with our own personal stories and experiences of our families, and this is what we're working with.

Genocide denial is, according to the definition, the last phase of the genocide. Unfortunately, here in Bosnia, we can now talk about even about next one. It is glorification of the war criminals. Criminals. So we are giving them a lot of tools to educate themselves. What is the situation that possibly can bring us to the atrocity like this? So this is something that we would like young people to learn: how to recognize the first signs, how to, to react in a time, and how to make maybe faster decisions in the future, you know.

I thank Miss Amra, Miss Al-Masr, and Mr. Azir for sharing their work and their life mission with us. Your Excellencies, dear friends, with the reiteration of that life mission, we end our observance today. A mission to make the promise of never again. Again a reality. A mission to protect the facts as established by international courts in the face of genocide denial and distortion. To educate, as dear Amra said in the documentary, to never forget where hatred leads and to never allow hate to lead. To reaffirm day in and day out, the values and principles that bind us together, because it is our shared responsibility and obligation to ensure that everyone, everywhere is protected from the scourge of genocide. Let me end by using this opportunity to announce another important reflection. On 17 July, here at UN Headquarters, The Srebrenica Genocide Outreach Program will be presenting for the first time together two exhibitions on the Srebrenica genocide. From Words to Violence: Lies Behind the Fields of Death and Legacy of Hope: After the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, a New Generation's Journey. These were first presented in July last year separately and will showcase on 17 July a full story of the Srebrenica genocide and its aftermath. I encourage you to watch them. And I thank all of you for joining us today. My special thanks go to the Department of Global Communications, which is coordinating the Srebrenica Outreach Program with my office, and to the Permanent Mission of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Permanent Mission of Türkiye for their support in organizing today's observance. Lastly, to all the colleagues who supported us today, we must never forget Srebrenica. It must never happen again to anyone anywhere. Thank you very much.