For the first time, July 11 has been designated as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, following a UN resolution. Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, emphasized the importance of remembering the victims, countering genocide denial, and preventing future atrocities in his statement ahead of the day.

“I was a United Nations human rights field officer during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of the most important tasks of my colleagues and myself was to chronicle the atrocities that were perpetrated right across the period of the conflict,” O’Flaherty recalled.

He highlighted the horrors of the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995, where over 8,000 men were viciously murdered, and women and children faced brutal human rights violations and subsequent expulsion from the area.

“By far the most horrific of those was, of course, the genocide at Srebrenica,” he said.

O’Flaherty welcomed the UN's decision to declare an annual day of remembrance. He outlined four essential actions to be taken on this day:

“The first is that we must remember. It is essential that we recall what happened in all its detail, we never forget because it is when we forget that there is a danger that such awful things can happen again.

Second, we must honour. We must honour those who died. We must honour the victims of the abuses. We must honour their relatives and their descendants.

Third, we must be outraged. We must be outraged against those who deny the fact of the genocide, or who glorify those who perpetrated it.

And fourth, and finally, we must act. We must recommit to building societies with the thread of human rights holding them together, where acts of genocide would be inconceivable.”