Bosnian Genocide - Casualties

Casualties

If a narrow definition of genocide is used, as favoured by the international courts, then during the Srebrenica massacre 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered and the remainder of the population (between 25,000–30,000, Bosniak women, children and elderly people) was forced to leave the area.

If a wider definition is used, then the number is much larger. For example in a statement on 23 September 2008 to the United Nations Dr. Haris Silajdžić, as head of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Delegation to the United Nations, 63rd Session of the General Assembly, said that "According to the ICRC data, 200,000 people were killed, 12,000 of them children, up to 50,000 women were raped, and 2.2 million were forced to flee their homes. This was a veritable genocide and sociocide". More recently in October 2009, the Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo published its findings and found 97,214 persons dead, of whom 57,529 were soldiers.

Such estimations have been criticized as highly inaccurate and analyists such as George Kenney have accused the Bosnian government and the international community of sensationalism and of deliberately inflating the number of fatalities to attract international support for the Muslims.