On 8 July 2015 the UN Security Council held a briefing on the “Situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina” to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the mass killings at Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 lives were lost. The adoption of the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) at the 2005 UN World Summit was a result of painful lessons learned from the failure to prevent genocide in Srebrenica in 1995 and in Rwanda during 1994. Despite the briefing ending with Russia regrettably vetoing a proposed resolution, which commemorated the anniversary and described Srebrenica as a genocide, other Security Council members delivered powerful statements acknowledging the significance of contemporary norms and institutions, such as the Global Network of R2P Focal Points, for the prevention of mass atrocity crimes.

The following document provides a summary of relevant excerpts from statements delivered during the briefing.