France will be one of the co-sponsors of a draft UN resolution on Srebrenica, the Srebrenica Memorial Center announced on April 12, a move that would establish a day marking the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995.
The news, announced by the Srebrenica Memorial Center but has yet to be confirmed by France, came after the Voice of America (VOA) earlier this week reported that several UN member states are working on a draft resolution that would declare July 11 as the International Day of the Remembrance of the Genocide committed in Srebrenica in 1995.
The draft resolution is to be presented on April 17 at a closed-doors meeting at the UN, VOA reported citing unofficial sources.
The draft resolution, seen by RFE/RL, calls for the condemnation of any denial of the genocide in Srebrenica and encourages UN members to establish educational programs to prevent future manifestations of revisionism and genocide.
The move has been opposed by Milorad Dodik, the Russia-friendly leader of Bosnia-Herzegovina's ethnic Serb entity, Republika Srpska, who threatened that if the resolution is adopted, "Republika Srpska will withdraw from the decision-making process in Bosnia."
Dodik, who has been sanctioned by the United States and Britain over his efforts to undermine the Dayton peace accords that ended the Balkan country's war in 1995, has reiterated his denial of the Srebrenica genocide.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2008 ruled that the killing of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by ethnic Serb forces in July 1995 during the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia was genocide.
The final text of the resolution is still in the works, and all 193 UN member countries will have their say on the document at the UN General Assembly early next month.
So far, more than 50 individuals have been sentenced to some 700 years in prison for their roles in the Srebrenica genocide.
Radovan Karadzic, the first president (1992-1995) of Republika Srpska, one of the two entities that make up Bosnia, was sentenced to life in prison by ICTY for the Srebrenica genocide and crimes against humanity. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serbs' military commander was also sentenced to life by the same court for his role in the genocide.
The initiators of the resolution are Germany and Rwanda, but as VOA has reported citing unofficial sources, the United States, Albania, Finland, New Zealand, Turkey, and other countries are also participating in the drafting of the text.