Britain’s Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Rt. Hon. James Brokenshire, presented the Remembering Srebrenica foundation’s 2019 UK Theme ‘Bridging the Divide: Confronting Hate’ in the House of Lords to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide.

Aside from him, four lords and three members of British Parliament addressed the Lords, as did a 17-year-old Amina Mekic, who spoke of her family’s experiences, war traumas and losses of family members during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

She was born in Great Britain and is the second generation survivor of the war. Her family came from Bosnia’s capital – Sarajevo.

“We lost many family members in the war. Recently we found the remains of my uncle and grandfather. We don’t know how or when they were killed, exactly. Twenty-five years later, no one has answered for their deaths,” Amina said. “Many of us were displaced across the world, and my family came to Birmingham, UK. Early on I started attending a Bosnian supplementary school, and I’m also a member of a Bosnian folklore group ‘Mladost Bosne’.”

After presenting the Theme, she thanked for the opportunity to speak before the House of Lords on behalf of Bosnian youth.

“I will always be grateful to the Remembering Srebrenica foundation for the work they do together with the BH UK Network, and for giving me the opportunity to take part in something as significant as this is for our homeland,” she said.

The Birmingham-based Remembering Srebrenica foundation was founded in 2013 and has successfully educated more than 90,000 British youths about the Srebrenica genocide, since its inception. They have organised more than 6,200 events marking the genocide and trips to the Potocari memorial centre for more than 1,200 Britons, to learn more about the events from July of 1995.

The lords also heard from Amra Mujkanovic whose family came to the UK from Prijedor, Bosnia, and Dr Waqar Azmi, the Chairman of Remembering Srebrenica foundation.

In April 1993 the UN had declared the besieged enclave of the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica a safe zone under the UN protection. However, in July 1995 the Dutch battalion failed to prevent the town's capture by the Bosnian Serb forces and the massacre that followed.

More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in the genocide committed in the days after 11 July 1995, and so far the remains of more than 6,600 have been found and buried.