Nick Teunissen was so intrigued by a photograph of a young Bosnian who went missing during the Srebrenica genocide, he decided to write a book that would illuminate some of the real lives behind the headlines and casualty figures.
Sarajevo-born Dzemil Hodzic uses his personal experience of searching for photographs of his brother, who was killed in the Bosnian war, to help preserve the memories of people who have lost their lives in contemporary conflict zones.
On the eve of the second anniversary of the full scale Russian invasion, Ukrainians are experiencing feelings that citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina have long been familiar with: the fear of new escalations and destabilisation, the search for justice and the complicating fact that many perpetrators are out of reach, and the feeling that the world has turned its attention elsewhere.
Some of the remains of people killed in the July 1995 genocide haven’t been unidentified and remain in storage. A new repository is being built at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre to finally give them a dignified resting place.
In April 1993, on one of the most tragic days of the Bosnian war, 116 Bosniaks were murdered in the village of Ahmici and 22 Croats were killed in the village of Trusina. Thirty years on, survivors are still mourning.
At the start of the Bosnian war, Albanians’ shops were attacked in the city of Doboj and Fadila Huduti’s husband was seized by Serb forces. When she read that a suspect was finally going on trial, she knew she had to tell her story.
Ahead of the appeal in the Hague court’s trial of former Serbian State Security chiefs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, the widow of a man killed by Serb fighters operating in Bosnia in 1995 said she wants to see justice done.
Since the Netherlands started offering compensation to relatives of certain Srebrenica genocide victims because Dutch peacekeeping troops failed to protect them, millions of euros have been paid out but several thousand applications are pending.
Since the Uborak and Sutina massacres, the most serious war crimes in the Herzegovina region during the 1990s conflict, the victims’ families have been calling for a dignified memorial, but have faced indifference from ethno-nationalist political leaders.
Thousands of Bosniak men walked 100 kilometres across harsh terrain to escape being massacred by Bosnian Serb forces after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995 - but there were also women and children fleeing with them, suffering the same terrors.