•HRES 199 EH 
Whereas Bosnian Serb forces blockaded the enclave early in 
1995, depriving the entire population of humanitarian aid 
and outside communication and contact, and effectively 
reducing the ability of the Dutch peacekeeping battalion 
to deter aggression or otherwise respond effectively to a 
deteriorating situation; 
Whereas beginning on July 6, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces at-
tacked UNPROFOR outposts, seized control of the iso-
lated enclave, held captured Dutch soldiers hostage and, 
after skirmishes with local defenders, ultimately took con-
trol of the town of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995; 
Whereas an estimated one-third of the population of 
Srebrenica, including a relatively small number of sol-
diers, made a desperate attempt to pass through the lines 
of Bosnian Serb forces to the relative safety of Bosnian-
held territory, but many were killed by patrols and am-
bushes; 
Whereas the remaining population sought protection with the 
Dutch peacekeeping battalion at its headquarters in the 
village of Potocari north of Srebrenica but many of these 
individuals were randomly seized by Bosnian Serb forces 
to be beaten, raped, or executed; 
Whereas Bosnian Serb forces deported women, children, and 
the elderly in buses, held Bosniak males over 16 years of 
age at collection points and sites in northeastern Bosnia 
and Herzegovina under their control, and then summarily 
executed and buried the captives in mass graves; 
Whereas approximately 20 percent of Srebrenica’s total popu-
lation at the time—at least 7,000 and perhaps thousands 
more—was either executed or killed;
•HRES 199 EH 
Whereas the United Nations and its member states have 
largely acknowledged their failure to take actions and de-
cisions that could have deterred the assault on Srebrenica 
and prevented the subsequent massacre; 
Whereas Bosnian Serb forces, hoping to conceal evidence of 
the massacre at Srebrenica, subsequently moved corpses 
from initial mass grave sites to many secondary sites 
scattered throughout parts of northeastern Bosnia and 
Herzegovina under their control; 
Whereas the massacre at Srebrenica was among the worst of 
many horrible atrocities to occur in the conflict in Bosnia 
and Herzegovina from April 1992 to November 1995, 
during which the policies of aggression and ethnic cleans-
ing pursued by Bosnian Serb forces with the direct sup-
port of the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic and its 
followers ultimately led to the displacement of more than 
2,000,000 people, an estimated 200,000 killed, tens of 
thousands raped or otherwise tortured and abused, and 
the innocent civilians of Sarajevo and other urban centers 
repeatedly subjected to shelling and sniper attacks; 
Whereas Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and 
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (done at Paris on 
December 9, 1948, and entered into force with respect to 
the United States on February 23, 1989) defines geno-
cide as ‘‘any of the following acts committed with intent 
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial 
or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the 
group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to 
members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the 
group conditions of life calculated to bring about its 
physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing 
measures intended to prevent births within the group;
•HRES 199 EH 
and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to an-
other group’’; 
Whereas on May 25, 1993, the United Nations Security 
Council adopted Resolution 827 establishing the world’s 
first international war crimes tribunal, the International 
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 
based in The Hague, the Netherlands, and charging the 
ICTY with responsibility for investigating and pros-
ecuting individuals suspected of committing war crimes, 
genocide, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of 
the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the territory of the 
former Yugoslavia since 1991; 
Whereas nineteen individuals at various levels of responsi-
bility have been indicted, and in some cases convicted, for 
grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, viola-
tions of the laws or customs of war, crimes against hu-
manity, genocide, and complicity in genocide associated 
with the massacre at Srebrenica, three of whom, most no-
tably Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, remain at 
large; and 
Whereas the international community, including the United 
States, has continued to provide personnel and resources, 
including through direct military intervention, to prevent 
further aggression and ethnic cleansing, to negotiate the 
General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and 
Herzegovina (initialed in Dayton, Ohio, on November 21, 
1995, and signed in Paris on December 14, 1995), and 
to help ensure its fullest implementation, including co-
operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for 
the former Yugoslavia: Now, therefore, be it
•HRES 199 EH 
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Represent-
atives that—
(1) the thousands of innocent people executed at 
Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 1995, 
along with all individuals who were victimized during the 
conflict and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 
1992 to 1995, should be solemnly remembered and hon-
ored; 
(2) the policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing 
as implemented by Serb forces in Bosnia and 
Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995 meet the terms defining 
the crime of genocide in Article 2 of the Convention on 
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Geno-
cide; 
(3) foreign nationals, including United States citi-
zens, who have risked and in some cases lost their lives 
in Bosnia and Herzegovina while working toward peace 
should be solemnly remembered and honored; 
(4) the United Nations and its member states 
should accept their share of responsibility for allowing 
the Srebrenica massacre and genocide to occur in Bosnia 
and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995 by failing to take 
sufficient, decisive, and timely action, and the United 
Nations and its member states should constantly seek to