Russian Federation vetoes United Nations resolution calling Srebrenica a genocide

The draft garnered 10 affirmative votes and four abstentions, Angola, China, Nigeria and Venezuela.

The current UNSC draft resolution on Srebrenica is the sixth version of the British resolution on Srebrenica, with the first one submitted in June.

“We gather in humility and regret to recognize the failure of the United Nations and the global community to prevent this tragedy”, Mr. Eliasson told the 15-member Council this morning ahead of a vote, marking the 20th anniversary of the tragic events in which 8,000 men and boys who were killed by Bosnian Serb forces who overran Srebrenica – the largest such massacre on European soil since the Organization’s founding.

Instead of Srebrenica, he said the council should commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1995 peace agreement signed in Dayton, Ohio that ended the Bosnian war later this year, and make every effort to implement it and normalize relations in the Balkans.

Goati, the political analyst, said Serbia’s reaction to calling Srebrenica a genocide is characteristic of any people or individual accused of an atrocity.

Negotiations on the draft text were hard.

The resolution condemning The 1995 Srebrenica massacres as genocide failed to pass on Wednesday after Serbia’s ally Russian Federation, which has a Security Council veto, voted against it.

Russia’s veto is “heartbreaking” to the victims’ families and “a further stain on this council’s record”, said Power.

Durakovic and other prominent Bosniaks have voiced their opposition to Vucic’s visit, particularly after the recent arrest of Naser Oric, Srebrenica’s wartime commander in Switzerland, on a Serbian war crimes arrest warrant.

Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs claimed a few 100,000 lives.

Ivan Jakocevic previously stressed that the resolution was not directed against Serbia and the Serb people but was aimed at ensuring that such a crime is not repeated, and noted that everyone committed crimes in the war, including his country, Croatia.

Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin called the British-drafted text “not constructive, confrontational and politically-motivated” and argued that it unfairly singled out Bosnian Serbs for war crimes.

Insisting the resolution would not pass, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic announced on Tuesday that he would attend the anniversary commemoration.

Mothers of Srebrenica, an organisation of Bosniak women dedicated to the men – sons, brothers and husbands – slaughtered at Srebrenica still says the Serb leaders are welcome at Saturday’s ceremonies, but not unconditionally.

His contrition came a year after denying that a genocide was committed in Srebrenica, prompting outrage in the region and condemnation from Europe and the U.S. But, 20 years on, they have yet to be sentenced for Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II.

Thousands of men and boys were murdered and their bodies dumped in nearby mass graves in the days that followed, as the Dutch United Nations battalion – called the “Dutchbat” for short – returned home via an alcohol-fuelled reception in the Croatian capital of Zagreb.