BEING selected to be a young delegate for a programme to visit Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the country is still reasonably new in its origins after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia at the end of the Cold War, I was keen to reserve any expectations about my visit until my arrival, writes JACK WELCH.

I attended as part of a national initiative, Remembering Srebrenica – a charity which invites young people across the UK to visit the sites impacted by the Bosnian War in the early 1990s, and hoped the trip would provide me with an opportunity to understand the devastating consequences as a result of the conflict.

This also includes the need to address unnecessary tensions within our local communities.

I was under no illusion, though, about the emotional strain this programme would have.

From our itinerary, we would be visiting the graves of the memorial and exhibition in the village of Srebrenica, where over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, the vast majority being men and boys, were executed by Bosnian-Serb forces led by General Ratko Maladic.

The feeling from standing in the graveyard itself, where the curator of the Memorial Centre is a survivor of the massacre, is almost too overwhelming to think of the failure of other European countries and the United Nations in preventing the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust.

It is perhaps all the more moving to hear the personal stories of the mothers left behind, where many are the only relative surviving, who have largely been unable to bury the complete remains of their sons and husbands because of the mass grave burials of those killed afterwards.

Next July will be the 20th anniversary of the genocide and for many of those left behind, it will probably be just like reliving the memory as it was in 1995.

There were fifteen delegates in total and another visit was to the home of the newly appointed British Ambassador for the country, Edward Ferguson, discussing the issues currently facing Bosnia.

A particular highlight was our tour of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), where this organisation is singularly responsible for identifying the remains of excavated bodies and allowing families to bury loved ones.

I am hopeful that after returning to Dorset – though very different from the circumstances in Bosnia – I will be able to pass on the basic principles of tolerance and rejecting discrimination which Remembering Srebrenica has given me.

Visit srebrenica.org.uk for more information.