In April 1993, the United Nations made history by declaring Srebrenica the world's first safe area and promising UN protection for civilians fleeing the war in the former Yugoslavia.
Two years later, at the height of the war, a Dutch battalion of UN peacekeepers arrived and established a base just outside Srebrenica at the site of a battery factory in Potocari.
The factory already housed thousands of displaced people and as news of the Dutch battalion's arrival spread, more than 25,000 refugees flowed into Potocari encouraged by the promise of protection.
In July 1995, Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian Serb army. On their arrival at the Dutch base, the Serb army separated the men and boys from their female family members.
In the days that followed, the Bosnian Serb army killed at least 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the single largest massacre in Europe since 1945.
The barbarity of what happened combined with the failure of the United Nations to live up to its promise of protection have combined to make Srebrenica an internationally significant site of conscience.
The process of confirming the identify of those men and boys that remain 'missing' continues to play a vital part in establishing the facts of what happened at Srebrenica including, crucially, the extent of the killings.
The return of bodies to surviving family members has also helped to create a sense of closure for the wives, mothers and sisters still wondering what happened to their husbands, sons and brothers.
When the identifications and burials are complete, the cemetery at Potocari, with its thousands of headstones, will be both a moving memorial to the men and boys buried there and a compelling visual testament to the extent of the massacre.
The job of telling the story of what happened at Srebrenica and providing a window onto the lives of the men and boys who lost their lives will fall to the memorial room, which is being built in the now-disused battery factory across the road from the cemetery.
The memorial room is a black concrete structure, designed by Sarajevo based-architect Aida Daidzic. The structure that will house the memorial room is situated in the middle of one of the massive interior spaces of the factory in which the thousands of refugees from Srebrenica sought sanctuary.
On entering the memorial room, visitors will walk past showcases containing the personal belongings of some of those who died there.
Cigarette lighters, keys, tobacco tins, photograph albums and other personal effects are among the items excavated from mass graves over the past eight years, and these will be used in conjunction with interpretive text to help tell the stories of at least some of the men and boys who were killed.
The personal profiles of some of those who were killed will be set into the outside wall of the memorial room and the back lighting from the display cases will provide the only light in what will otherwise be a black corridor.
Arriving in the centre of the structure, visitors will watch a film which will give a brief account of the events of July 1995. The film was directed by British documentary maker Leslie Woodhead, who made the award-winning documentary about the massacre, A Cry from the Grave.
Woodhead collaborated on the film with Muhamed Mujkic, a local filmmaker who has over the past eight years recorded the excavation of numerous mass graves.
The film has extensive use of footage from 1995, including the arrival of the Dutch battalion and the Serb army in Srebrenica, together with footage of the refugees at the factory.
The relationship between the historical footage of what happened at the factory in 1995 and the site itself will be emphasised by Daidzic's decision to allow visitors to look up and out of the memorial room into the factory through the room's slated roof.
Daidzic hopes that this arrangement will help orientate visitors to the site, reminding them that they are actually in the factory that they are seeing on the film.
Apart from her credentials as an architect, Daidzic brings a deep understanding of and affinity to the memorial project. During the war she helped to establish the International Initiative of Women of Bosnia and Hercegovina, which played an important part in bringing the use of rape as a weapon during the war to international attention.
Daidzic says that the memorial is a place of paradox: 'It needs to be both a meeting point and a point of confrontation, a place in which it's possible to grow understanding and somewhere that underscores that these events are impossible to understand.'
Srebrenica is, of course, challenging for the parties that were implicated in the massacre: the international community for its failure to prevent the massacre and the Serb army which perpetrated it. Part of the memorial's role is to create a narrative of what happened and to help visitors identify with its victims by telling some of the individual stories of a few of the thousands that were killed.
But the memorial is also playing an important part in helping people, including those that lost family members in the massacre, to make sense of what happened. Amra Fazlic is one of a small number of Bosnian Muslims to return home to Srebrenica since the end of the war.
Fazlic, whose father was killed in the massacre, is now working with the Memorial Foundation and is hoping to secure a role welcoming visitors to the memorial when it opens next year. She is particularly interested in undertaking educational outreach, especially with young people.
At a personal level, for Fazlic the value of the memorial will be when her nieces and nephews are old enough to visit it and to be told what happened to their grandfather. 'The memorial will help tell the story of what happened, even when those of us that were there forget the details,' she says.
The idea for the memorial room came from Lord Ashdown, the High Representative in Bosnia-Hercegovina, who chaired the Srebrenica Potocari Memorial Foundation Executive Board during its establishment phase.
The memorial project is one of a number of projects being undertaken in Bosnia-Hercegovina dedicated to memory, truth telling and to reconciliation. Ashdown's involvement in the memorial helped secure British support for the project, which is in part being funded by the Foreign Office.
It also helped broker a relationship between the Memorial Foundation and the Imperial War Museum. In fact, a visit by Ashdown to the Imperial War Museum's holocaust exhibition helped set development of the Srebrenica Memorial in motion.
Since then, Suzanne Bardgett, the director of the Imperial War Museum's holocaust project, has been an adviser to the foundation and has played a key role in conceptualising the memorial room and advising on its interpretive aspects.
Like Europe's holocaust memorials, the Srebrenica Memorial Room is an expression of our desire to discharge a moral obligation to testify on behalf of the dead, and to ensure that the horrific events that led to their deaths are never forgotten.
Joseph O'Reilly is a lawyer, consultant and the founding director of the International Human Rights Museum Initiative
www.ihrmi.org
Two years later, at the height of the war, a Dutch battalion of UN peacekeepers arrived and established a base just outside Srebrenica at the site of a battery factory in Potocari.
The factory already housed thousands of displaced people and as news of the Dutch battalion's arrival spread, more than 25,000 refugees flowed into Potocari encouraged by the promise of protection.
In July 1995, Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian Serb army. On their arrival at the Dutch base, the Serb army separated the men and boys from their female family members.
In the days that followed, the Bosnian Serb army killed at least 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the single largest massacre in Europe since 1945.
The barbarity of what happened combined with the failure of the United Nations to live up to its promise of protection have combined to make Srebrenica an internationally significant site of conscience.
The process of confirming the identify of those men and boys that remain 'missing' continues to play a vital part in establishing the facts of what happened at Srebrenica including, crucially, the extent of the killings.
The return of bodies to surviving family members has also helped to create a sense of closure for the wives, mothers and sisters still wondering what happened to their husbands, sons and brothers.
When the identifications and burials are complete, the cemetery at Potocari, with its thousands of headstones, will be both a moving memorial to the men and boys buried there and a compelling visual testament to the extent of the massacre.
The job of telling the story of what happened at Srebrenica and providing a window onto the lives of the men and boys who lost their lives will fall to the memorial room, which is being built in the now-disused battery factory across the road from the cemetery.
The memorial room is a black concrete structure, designed by Sarajevo based-architect Aida Daidzic. The structure that will house the memorial room is situated in the middle of one of the massive interior spaces of the factory in which the thousands of refugees from Srebrenica sought sanctuary.
On entering the memorial room, visitors will walk past showcases containing the personal belongings of some of those who died there.
Cigarette lighters, keys, tobacco tins, photograph albums and other personal effects are among the items excavated from mass graves over the past eight years, and these will be used in conjunction with interpretive text to help tell the stories of at least some of the men and boys who were killed.
The personal profiles of some of those who were killed will be set into the outside wall of the memorial room and the back lighting from the display cases will provide the only light in what will otherwise be a black corridor.
Arriving in the centre of the structure, visitors will watch a film which will give a brief account of the events of July 1995. The film was directed by British documentary maker Leslie Woodhead, who made the award-winning documentary about the massacre, A Cry from the Grave.
Woodhead collaborated on the film with Muhamed Mujkic, a local filmmaker who has over the past eight years recorded the excavation of numerous mass graves.
The film has extensive use of footage from 1995, including the arrival of the Dutch battalion and the Serb army in Srebrenica, together with footage of the refugees at the factory.
The relationship between the historical footage of what happened at the factory in 1995 and the site itself will be emphasised by Daidzic's decision to allow visitors to look up and out of the memorial room into the factory through the room's slated roof.
Daidzic hopes that this arrangement will help orientate visitors to the site, reminding them that they are actually in the factory that they are seeing on the film.
Apart from her credentials as an architect, Daidzic brings a deep understanding of and affinity to the memorial project. During the war she helped to establish the International Initiative of Women of Bosnia and Hercegovina, which played an important part in bringing the use of rape as a weapon during the war to international attention.
Daidzic says that the memorial is a place of paradox: 'It needs to be both a meeting point and a point of confrontation, a place in which it's possible to grow understanding and somewhere that underscores that these events are impossible to understand.'
Srebrenica is, of course, challenging for the parties that were implicated in the massacre: the international community for its failure to prevent the massacre and the Serb army which perpetrated it. Part of the memorial's role is to create a narrative of what happened and to help visitors identify with its victims by telling some of the individual stories of a few of the thousands that were killed.
But the memorial is also playing an important part in helping people, including those that lost family members in the massacre, to make sense of what happened. Amra Fazlic is one of a small number of Bosnian Muslims to return home to Srebrenica since the end of the war.
Fazlic, whose father was killed in the massacre, is now working with the Memorial Foundation and is hoping to secure a role welcoming visitors to the memorial when it opens next year. She is particularly interested in undertaking educational outreach, especially with young people.
At a personal level, for Fazlic the value of the memorial will be when her nieces and nephews are old enough to visit it and to be told what happened to their grandfather. 'The memorial will help tell the story of what happened, even when those of us that were there forget the details,' she says.
The idea for the memorial room came from Lord Ashdown, the High Representative in Bosnia-Hercegovina, who chaired the Srebrenica Potocari Memorial Foundation Executive Board during its establishment phase.
The memorial project is one of a number of projects being undertaken in Bosnia-Hercegovina dedicated to memory, truth telling and to reconciliation. Ashdown's involvement in the memorial helped secure British support for the project, which is in part being funded by the Foreign Office.
It also helped broker a relationship between the Memorial Foundation and the Imperial War Museum. In fact, a visit by Ashdown to the Imperial War Museum's holocaust exhibition helped set development of the Srebrenica Memorial in motion.
Since then, Suzanne Bardgett, the director of the Imperial War Museum's holocaust project, has been an adviser to the foundation and has played a key role in conceptualising the memorial room and advising on its interpretive aspects.
Like Europe's holocaust memorials, the Srebrenica Memorial Room is an expression of our desire to discharge a moral obligation to testify on behalf of the dead, and to ensure that the horrific events that led to their deaths are never forgotten.
Joseph O'Reilly is a lawyer, consultant and the founding director of the International Human Rights Museum Initiative
www.ihrmi.org
