Address by the Deputy Prime Minister of Montenegro and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ervin Ibrahimović at the panel on the occasion of International Memorial Day and the commemoration of the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995

I especially thank the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Montenegro for accepting the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the panelists, ambassadors of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Federal Republic of Germany, the protector of human rights and freedoms of Montenegro, and the executive director of Action for Human Rights, for openly discussing the genocide in Srebrenica, responsibility, justice, and the future. The goals of the resolution, and our tasks as responsible states and governments, are clear – remembering the victims, preserving established legal and historical facts, ensuring accountability, justice, and truth, as well as strengthening awareness of the crime of genocide that should go beyond the genocide committed in Srebrenica, through education of current and future generations so that such a crime never happens again anywhere in the world. Recently, we had the opportunity, organized by Action for Human Rights, to hear more details about Srebrenica from a historical science perspective, including the claims of Serbian historian Popović that the genocide in Srebrenica is the most documented crime in human history. The rulings of the highest international courts confirm that responsibility is solely individual, and any attempt to shift blame or associate a nation with the crime of genocide, here or anywhere else in the world, is nothing but a denial of the truth and a negation of genocide. The fact that we have not yet fully carried out the process of transitional justice, i.e., confronting the past, truth, and responsibility, is also confirmed by reports on the progress of the European Commission regarding individual countries in the region and their integration processes, as well as reports from UN treaty bodies and the Residual Mechanism in The Hague. In this context, I would like to express deep gratitude to the director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, Mr. Emir Suljagić, for participating in today’s event via video message and for the vital contribution of the Center, under his leadership, in preserving the memory and truth about the victims of Srebrenica.