Ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian War

Ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian War
Part of the Bosnian War and Bosnian genocide
Exhumed victims of ethnic cleansing through murder in the Srebrenica massacre
Ethnic distribution at the municipal level in Bosnia and Herzegovina before (1991) and after the war (1998)
Location	Bosnia and Herzegovina
Coordinates	43°52′N 18°25′E / 43.867°N 18.417°E / 43.867; 18.417
Date	1992 – 1995
Attack type	Ethnic cleansing, genocide, deportation, genocidal rape, mass murder, destruction of cultural heritage
Deaths	Tens of thousands[1]
Injured	18,000[2]–25,000[3] women and men raped
Victims	Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks 1.0[4]–1.3 million[5] deported or forcibly resettled
Perpetrators	Army of Republika Srpska, Scorpions Special Operations Unit, Serb Volunteer Guard, Bosnian and Croatian Army
Motive	Ethnonationalism, irredentism

Ethnic cleansing occurred during the Bosnian War (1992–95) as large numbers of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and Bosnian Croats were forced to flee their homes or were expelled by the Army of Republika Srpska and Serb paramilitaries.^[6][7][8][9] Bosniaks and Bosnian Serbs had also been forced to flee or were expelled by Bosnian Croat forces, though on a restricted scale and in lesser numbers. The UN Security Council Final Report (1994) states while Bosniaks also engaged in "grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other violations of international humanitarian law", they "have not engaged in "systematic ethnic cleansing"".^[10] According to the report, "there is no factual basis for arguing that there is a 'moral equivalence' between the warring factions".^[10]

Beginning in 1991, political upheavals in Bosnia and Herzegovina displaced about 2.7 million people by mid-1992, of which over 700,000 sought asylum in other European countries,^[11][12] making it the largest exodus in Europe since World War II. It is estimated between 1.0 and 1.3 million people were uprooted in these ethnic cleansing campaigns, and that tens of thousands were killed.

The methods used during the Bosnian ethnic cleansing campaigns include "killing of civilians, rape, torture, destruction of civilian, public, and cultural property, looting and pillaging, and the forcible relocation of civilian populations".^[13] Most of the perpetrators of these campaigns were Serb forces and most of the victims were Bosniaks. The UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) later convicted several officials for persecution on political, racial and religious grounds; forced transfer and deportation constituting a crime against humanity. The Srebrenica massacre, which was also included as part of the ethnic cleansing campaign, was found to constitute the crime of genocide.