Report ‘Srebrenica: a safe area’: intra-political discussions & public attention

Abstract

The paper analyzes the political and public reaction to the report “Srebrenica: a ‘safe’ area” published by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation in 2002. The point of contention concerns the admission of responsibility and fault for the Dutchbat actions in the Balkans in 1995, and the attitude of the Dutch citizens to peacekeeping, evaluation of the Government’s actions regarding the deployment abroad. For the Netherlands as a state that is always committed to the actions within the international legal framework, the moral and ethical aspects of the humanitarian intervention play a significant role as well as the state’s behavior in the international arena. The topic currently remains relevant for the other EU member-states in the light of the ongoing conflict in Syria and related issues of migration/asylum requests, border security, and counteractions to terrorism. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the NIOD report publication influenced the Dutch foreign and domestic policy, why the peacekeeping strategy was revisited. The article examines inquiries of the parliamentary and the other different commissions, research and political publications, documentary evidence, and Mass Media. The author describes a method of parallel processing used by the Dutch historian Eelco Runia while studying the NIOD Report. After Srebrenica, an enormous amount of investigations and inquiries have been witnessing a growth of contradictions in the Dutch establishment, ambivalence, and a lack of unanimity in the conduct of the Dutch peacekeeping policy. The Netherlands as an international partner has lost the confidence of other states. While the issue of the fall of the enclave is still sensitive in the Netherlands, in general, the Dutch Government has acknowledged its responsibility for the deaths of Bosnian civilians.