Oral History: Dutch UN Peacekeepers and Bosniak Children in the UN Safe Area Srebrenica

• In Event: Militaries and Civilians

Abstract

From April – June 1992, 296 villages in the region around Srebrenica were destroyed by Serb forces forcing some 70,000 Bosniaks to find refuge in the enclave of Srebrenica. On April 18, 1993, United Nations sent in their peacekeepers to protect the Bosniak civilians. They failed to do so and consequently over 8,000 men and boys were killed by the Serb paramilitary during a five-day slaughter. This act went down in history books as an act of genocide and the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War.

Through eyewitness accounts, personal experiences, and opinions, my paper is an attempt to analyze the memories of both the UN peacekeepers as well as Srebrenica children regarding the period following April 18, 1993, up until July 21, 1995. Each of these different subjects were found to bear different memories, and these many voices and narratives add to power of a common, complex memory, when they would otherwise have been left divided (Salvatici 2000: 126).

My paper will address a total of 25 oral narratives collected in Srebrenica in 2009, 2010, and 2011 and in 2011 in the Netherlands. My oral sources focused on bringing to light the memories of each other’s interactions, perceptions and encounters during the safe area period. This framework is purposefully not centered around the genocide but extends its interests toward many other aspects of the memories, in particular the various types of relationships during the entire period of the Safe Area.

During my field work I was particularly struck by how unique and powerful the stories describing the relationships between the peacekeepers and children were. Interestingly, a number of UN peacekeepers were able to develope genuine and deep friendships with the Bosniak children that continued even after the genocide.

Author

• Tea Rozman Clark, University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia