Bosnia Asks UN Members to Sanction Serbia Over Mladic

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a letter on September 10, 2026, to every member state of the United Nations, asking each of them to respond publicly and consistently to the institutional glorification of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic in Serbia. The letter went out through Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, and on the same day Bosnian Foreign Minister Elmedin Konakovic sent a separate letter to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, demanding the strongest possible sanctions against Belgrade. For Serbia, the subject of both letters, this marks a new round of diplomatic pressure coming right after Mladic was buried with military honors in Belgrade.

The letter to the United Nations lays out three concrete demands for every member state:

• publicly condemn the official glorification of Mladic, including the use of state resources, military structures and honors
• impose targeted sanctions on officials who organize, promote or facilitate that glorification
• publicly affirm that the rulings of international courts on the Srebrenica genocide are final

Explaining the first demand, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs states:

“Publicly condemn the official and institutional glorification of Ratko Mladic, including the use of state resources, military structures and honors.”

Part of that same demand concerns the display of Mladic’s image alongside the message “Pravac Potocari” (“Heading to Potocari”), which Sarajevo describes as a direct call to genocidal violence. The second demand, seeking concrete restrictive measures, reads:

“Introduce targeted sanctions and other restrictive measures against officials who directly organize, take part in promoting or facilitate the official and institutional glorification of persons finally convicted of genocide.”

The third demand concerns the court rulings themselves and their finality. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs asks UN member states to:

“Publicly affirm the finality and authority of the rulings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals and the International Court of Justice.”

The letter draws particular attention to how Mladic’s remains were brought back to Serbia, flown in on a Serbian government plane and covered with a Serbian flag. As the legal basis for all three demands, the document cites UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/78/282, adopted on May 23, 2024, which established the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.

A separate letter to Rubio

Konakovic also wrote separately to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and to Congressman Kit Self. He is asking Washington to condemn Serbia’s authorities in the strongest terms and to consider imposing the toughest available sanctions on Serbia and on individuals involved in glorifying Mladic. In the letter he states:

“Ratko Mladic is not a person who should be the subject of legitimate national remembrance.”

As grounds for a US response, the letter notes that more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in Srebrenica under Ratko Mladic’s command, and that his forces led the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted nearly four years. Konakovic also cites three prior US Congressional resolutions that recognized Srebrenica as genocide: H. Res. 199 and S. Res. 134 from 2005, and H. Res. 310 from 2015.

The two letters extend a series of moves Konakovic has made since Serbia buried Mladic with state honors. Days earlier he expelled two diplomats from Serbia’s embassy in Sarajevo and called on three other countries to join Bosnia and Herzegovina in raising the issue with international institutions against Belgrade. As of this writing, neither the United Nations nor the US administration has publicly responded to either letter, leaving open whether any of the requested measures, sanctions included, will actually follow.