In this chapter Alma Mustafić and Niké Wentholt analysed how the Srebrenica court cases (Nuhanović, Mustafić, and the Mothers of Srebrenica) contributed to a wider process of repair in the Netherlands. Spoiler: not so much. But there’s hope! We take a broad and relational definition of both genocide and repair, present the achievements of the court cases, and identify potential contributions to wider reparation beyond the court room: fact-finding and opening up the conversation on responsibility. Unfortunately, the political and societal response (compensation, apologies, commemoration, and education) failed to give proper due to the achievements of the court cases.

In the final part, we argue that Bosnian-Dutch initiatives have stepped up when Dutch politics and society failed to do so. These bottom-up initiatives, we conclude, create another momentum for us all to use the potential of the court cases: there is still a longer repair process out there for the shared history of Srebrenica, but we have all the knowledge and expertise to take this on.

Other authors include Lisa Laplante (whose ‘justice continuum is one of the main conceptual frames of our DoJ-project), Jemima García-Godos, Mijke de Waardt, and Luke Moffett, amongst many others.

Read the full chapter here, as well as the full yearbook here.