Browse the site and make a Donation Now!
11 July 1995 · Bosnia and Herzegovina
On 11 July 1995, Bosnian Serb soldiers captured the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over the next few days, soldiers systematically murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys.
It was the largest massacre carried out on European soil since World War II, and one of dozens of similar massacres committed by Bosnian Serb forces as they carried out their ethnic cleansing campaigns during the Bosnian War.
The Bosnian War · 1992–1995
The war took place between 1992 and 1995, engulfing the whole country. It killed more than 100,000 people and forced more than 2 million from their homes. The horrors perpetrated at Srebrenica continue to haunt survivors. Even now, 30 years later, mass graves are still being uncovered, and bodies are still being identified.
The genocide at Srebrenica was not an isolated act. It was the culmination of a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out across Bosnia and Herzegovina — a campaign that targeted Bosniak Muslim communities through forced displacement, detention, torture, and mass execution. The international community's failure to prevent the genocide remains one of the most painful chapters in the history of the United Nations.
Archive Photographs
Zenica, February 1995 — Iftar for beneficiaries
Islamic Relief Gunja project
Islamic Relief Bosnia — field operations
Islamic Relief Bosnia — community support
Letter of thanks from the Bosnian government
Islamic Relief Bosnia — rebuilding lives
Islamic Relief in Bosnia · Since 1992
For more than 30 years, Islamic Relief has been honouring the memories of Srebrenica's victims and paying tribute to the strength of those that survived the genocide.
Islamic Relief began working in Bosnia in 1992, just one month after the outbreak of war. At the time, we were among a small number of international organisations operating on the ground to provide life-saving aid to people suffering through a horrifying conflict.
Throughout the decades since, we have continued to stand beside survivors. Our work has included helping people to rebuild their lives, supporting children orphaned by the genocide and war, and providing routes out of poverty.
In the wake of the events in Srebrenica, the world declared 'Never again'. We urge the international community to remember the lessons of the past.
In 2024, the International Court of Justice ordered action to prevent genocide in Gaza, finding it plausible that such a risk exists. Yet years later, the Court's ruling continues to be ignored, and Palestinians in Gaza continue to be killed, starved, forced from their homes, and denied aid.
International governments owe it to Srebrenica's victims and survivors to take action before it is too late and prevent genocide from ever happening again.
Watch
Testimonies
"I had to leave because they set the house on fire. They killed whoever they could. We never returned. Whoever stayed was killed."
— Tima
"My sisters went to visit my father and found him dead in bed. Seven bullets had been fired into him from a pistol. There's nothing they didn't do to him… that abuse, that torment they put him through, that's what hurts me the most."
— Avdo
"When we fled our home, my mother went down to a nearby village and my father went through the forest. He was captured and shot. In 2009, he was found in a mass grave, and then we buried him at the Memorial Centre."
— Ismet
"It is like you collect highlights from a movie. Some things you just cannot remember. Even today I feel the consequences."
— Hasan
"I couldn't recognise my husband. He was skinny and clean shaven. Skin and bones and nothing else. When my children walked by him, they couldn't recognise their father."
— Mensura
"Every day someone dies, and you run, not knowing when a bullet might hit you… you never know when."
— Umija
"It is hard. The trauma lasts a lifetime for every one. Hunger passes, poverty passes, everything passes, but the trauma and consequences stay."
— Tenzila
"In the beginning we truly believed the men would return… It is hard when you had everything, and then suddenly, you have nothing."
— Bida
"Never again" must mean something. The lessons of Srebrenica demand that the world acts — not after the fact, but before it is too late.