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Why did the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia conclude that the Srebrenica killings constituted genocide?

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Two women in headscarves embrace and mourn over a green coffin among rows of identical coffins at the Potocari cemetery during the Srebrenica massacre mass funeral. — Srebrenica genocide Women mourning over a coffin before the mass funeral for 136 newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, 2015.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) concluded that the events at Srebrenica constituted genocide because the systematic slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, when combined with the mass expulsion of Bosniak civilians, demonstrated a clear intent to destroy a protected group.12

The tribunal determined that these actions were part of a "joint criminal enterprise" aimed at the permanent removal or elimination of non-Serb populations from large areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina. By targeting the Bosniak population for mass murder and forced displacement, the Bosnian Serb forces—under the command of leaders such as Ratko Mladić—met the legal criteria for genocide. The ICTY’s ruling emphasized that these crimes were not isolated incidents but were orchestrated efforts to eradicate the presence of the targeted group from the region.21