UN Experts Warn Honouring Convicted War Criminals Deepens Survivors’ Pain

The experts said official honours can deepen grief, undermine historical truth and weaken the accountability that victims and their families have spent decades seeking.

For families still searching for relatives who disappeared during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, public tributes to convicted perpetrators can reopen wounds that have never healed. UN experts have warned that glorifying people responsible for genocide and other grave human rights violations causes further harm to survivors, following what their statement described as a hero's funeral for former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladić in Belgrade on 7 September.

The experts said official honours can deepen grief, undermine historical truth and weaken the accountability that victims and their families have spent decades seeking. They expressed particular concern over the attendance of senior officials from Republika Srpska, the entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina where many of the crimes occurred, stressing that public remembrance should recognise those who suffered and uphold facts.

A Funeral That Reopened Survivors' Wounds

Mladić was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed in and around Srebrenica in 1995. According to the experts' statement, he died in August 2026 during his life sentence in The Hague, and reports described his coffin being transported to Serbia on a government plane, carried by uniformed soldiers and placed under armed guard. Military medals were displayed as thousands visited a church in Belgrade to pay their respects.

For survivors and bereaved families, these gestures carry consequences far beyond the funeral itself, particularly when public officials appear to endorse the honouring of someone convicted of atrocities. The experts warned that such tributes can cause profound re-traumatisation, making families confront public celebrations of a perpetrator despite the suffering established through criminal proceedings and the lasting damage to their communities.

Families Are Still Searching for Truth

Three decades after the crimes, many families continue to live with the uncertainty surrounding relatives who were forcibly disappeared, making the search for truth and justice an ongoing part of daily life. The experts stressed that these experiences cannot be treated as a closed chapter, because unanswered questions about the fate and whereabouts of loved ones continue to shape the lives of those left behind.

The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has worked with families of missing and forcibly disappeared people in the region over many years. In 1994, the Commission on Human Rights established a Special Process on Missing Persons, entrusted to working group member Manfred Nowak, to help establish what happened to missing people and support their families. That history gives added weight to the experts' concern that honouring perpetrators can undermine decades of work toward truth, justice and reparations.

Remembrance Must Put Victims First

Public tributes and permanent shrines to people responsible for atrocities risk weakening efforts to challenge impunity and preserve the historical record, the experts warned. They said genocide denial threatens gains in international criminal accountability associated with the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials and the international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, raising concerns that reach beyond any single commemorative event.

Governments were urged to place victims' rights to truth, justice, reparation and guarantees against repetition at the centre of public policy and remembrance. Commemorative initiatives should uphold judicial facts, recognise legal responsibility and reject denial or historical revisionism, giving survivors and affected families a central place in how the past is remembered. The experts called for public actions that support healing and human dignity, emphasising that lasting reconciliation depends on acknowledging suffering and respecting victims rather than minimising the crimes committed against them.