When the American genocide scholar Gregory H. Stanton presented his paper “The Eight Stages of Genocide” back in 1996, the genocide in Srebrenica – committed by the Bosnian Serb Army under General Ratko Mladić – had already taken place a year earlier in the heart of Europe.
The 1995 Srebrenica genocide, now recognized as Europe's only legally established genocide since the Holocaust, would soon put Stanton's model to the test, ultimately affirming its enduring relevance.
In 2012, Stanton revised his paper and added two more stages to his model, presenting the ten stages of genocide, from classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, to persecution, extermination, and denial.
This academic framework has been used not only to explain how genocides occur but also to facilitate members of the community to recognize a particular stage and prevent a genocide before it happens.
In the decades following the ICTY and ICJ verdicts, the political leadership of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity and neighboring Serbia has persistently denied the Srebrenica genocide, despite its legal recognition. This still happens today. While the world pauses once a year on July 11 to remember the Bosniak Muslim men and boys killed in the summer of 1995, genocide deniers invoke Srebrenica every day—not to honor the victims, but to deny the crimes committed by the Army of Republika Srpska.
This denial deepens ethnic divisions and obstructs reconciliation, undermines prospects for lasting peace, and jeopardizes the EU membership aspirations of both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
No EU Membership without Truth
Since the early 2000s, the European Parliament and numerous EU member states have adopted several resolutions condemning genocide denial and relativization of the Srebrenica genocide. In 2020, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas made clear that “in a country that wants to join the EU, there is no place for nationalist agitation, the denial of war crimes or the glorification of war criminals.”
In July 2021, the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the international official responsible for overseeing the civilian implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, imposed a ban on genocide denial and glorification of war criminals via amendments to the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The genocide denial ban has led to a decrease in documented denial cases, but denial remains a persistent and unresolved issue.
In 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring July 11 the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica and condemning “without reservation any denial of the Srebrenica genocide as a historical event”.
Yet, despite these strong declarative and legal positions, many international actors have chosen to appease Serb nationalists and genocide deniers like Milorad Dodik and Aleksandar Vučić. This reluctance to confront denial has sent a dangerous message: that there are no real consequences for revisionism, hate speech, or the humiliation of genocide survivors.
How Genocide Denial Became Governance
This impunity is evident even in the town of Srebrenica itself. Mladen Grujičić, the former mayor of Srebrenica and member of the ruling SNSD (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats / Savez nezavisnih socijaldemokrata), has consistently denied the genocide, downplayed the number of Bosniak victims, and promoted conspiracy theories. His statement that he would recognize the genocide “if it is proven by facts and history” echoes the broader denialist stance of Republika Srpska’s political elite.
Opposition leaders offer no real alternative. Banja Luka Mayor and the president of PDP (Party of Democratic Progress / Partija demokratskog progresa) Draško Stanivuković has repeatedly denied the genocide, most recently in a 2024 online interview that led to legal action. Jelena Trivić, formerly of PDP, similarly claimed the genocide “never happened”. These examples show that in Republika Srpska, denial is part of mainstream politics.
For decades now, both ruling and opposition parties in the Republika Srpska entity have engaged in denying the genocide and glorifying war criminals. Far from offering an ideological alternative, the Serb opposition often mirrors the nationalist rhetoric of Dodik’s SNSD. What exists is not a genuine ideological opposition, but a fragmented group of MPs who compete with Dodik in promoting Serb nationalism, denying the Srebrenica genocide, and cultivating pro-Russian sentiment in a race for nationalist votes.
The scale and persistence of this denial are well-documented. The Srebrenica Memorial Center publishes an annual Report on Genocide Denial, tracking trends and patterns of denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the wider region.
The sixth edition of the Report, released this year on the 30th anniversary of the genocide, recorded 99 cases of denial between June 2024 and May 2025, a significant decrease compared to 305 cases the year before, possibly reflecting the impact of legal and societal pressure.
Still, Serbia remains the primary source of denial, followed by the Republika Srpska entity, and, to a lesser extent, Montenegro. The most frequent forms included 76 cases of active denial and 21 instances of relativizing the crime, alongside isolated instances of support for perpetrators, recognition of the crime without naming it genocide, and triumphalist rhetoric.
The Eleventh Stage of Genocide: Triumphalism in Practice
Since the end of the Bosnian War, genocide scholars have been studying the causes and long-lasting consequences of the Srebrenica genocide. What happened right before, during, and after Srebrenica is a textbook example fitting into Gregory H. Stanton’s ten stages of genocide, denial being the final stage.
While Stanton’s model ends with denial, it does not fully capture the evolving post-genocide dynamics in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Building upon Stanton’s research, the Bosnian-Australian genocide scholar Hariz Halilovich upgraded the model by adding an eleventh stage of genocide, which he referred to as “triumphalism”.
According to Halilovich, in this stage, perpetrators, their supporters, and political elites do not hide or deny the killings, but openly glorify them, publicly humiliate the survivors, and erect monuments honoring convicted war criminals.
Some of the examples proving Halilovich’s theory range from murals and monuments honoring war criminals throughout Serbia and the Republika Srpska entity to hate campaigns against Bosniak returnees in Republika Srpska.
This stage of triumphalism is not theoretical. It is unfolding in real time. Milorad Dodik, as the most prominent genocide denier in the Balkans today, exemplifies this phase through both rhetoric and concrete action.
How Far Is Too Far?
Milorad Dodik must be stopped before Bosnia and Herzegovina reaches the point of no return. Backed by Aleksandar Vučić and emboldened by years of impunity, Dodik has not only threatened secession; he has enacted it in slow motion. From establishing parallel institutions and undermining the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to advancing the re-creation of the Republika Srpska Army and aligning with the Kremlin, these are not mere warnings but elements of a dismantling process that is already underway.
Bosnia’s state institutions, including its judiciary, together with the international community, must act decisively: enforce the genocide denial ban, sanction those who glorify war criminals, and condition any political or financial cooperation with Serbia and Republika Srpska on full adherence to the Dayton Peace Agreement and international verdicts.
Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot afford another cycle of international inaction. Denial, if left unchallenged, does not fade. It evolves. The international community must confront not only what happened in the past, but what is happening now. As Stanton warned, denial itself is not the end. It is “among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres.”