Sunday, July 11th marked a sober anniversary for Bosnia, Europe, and the world.  Fifteen years ago, approximately 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred at Srebrenica by Serb forces, in the worst incident of genocide on the continent since World War Two.

On July 11, 1995, Serbian forces arrived at Srebrenica, which had served as a safe haven for Bosnian Muslims.  The Serbs overpowered the Dutch UN peacekeepers protecting the town and forced them to open the gates of the UN military base.  The Serb troops then took away thousands of Muslim men and boys, whom they later massacred.

Former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic is currently on trial in The Hague after being indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide related to the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.  Former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, leader of the Serb troops in Srebrenica, remains a fugitive from justice. 

Though the government supports preventive measures for stopping genocide from ever starting and organizations like Citizens for Global Solutions advocate for genocide prevention, what can we do when prevention fails? This week, an important military planning handbook was released to guide the government's actions for Mass Atrocity Response Operations, otherwise known as MARO.

The presentation highlights the activities of the ICC, specifically focusing upon the individuals who are presently indicted by the court.  The purpose of the interactive presentation is to demonstrate that the ICC is currently active in pursuing war criminals.  The Rome Statute, which is the legislation that created the ICC, defines the types of crimes that individuals can be charged for: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.  Many opponents have claimed that the ICC will target the actions of U.S. soldiers.  With this interactive module, Citizens for Global Solutions hopes to deflate that notion by demonstrating that the court is taking aggressive measures against individuals who have allegedly committed atrocious crimes throughout the world.

Pre-trial hearings have begun in the International Criminal Court case investigating alleged crimes committed by Sudanese rebel leader, Bahr Idriss Abu Garda. He is accused of leading about 1,000 men in an attack in 2007 in which 12 peacekeepers were killed. Abu Garda is the leader of the United Resistance Front, a rebel group fighting in Darfur against the Sudanese government.  At the end of these hearings, the ICC judges will decide whether there is sufficient evidence to begin a full trial against him.