The ethnic cleansing of a “safe area”: The fall of Srebrenica and the ethics of UN-governmentality

The ethnic cleansing of Srebrenica was not an unusual act of violence in the post-Cold War world. In Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Chechnya, Croatia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and many many other places political, ethnic and religious conflicts have degenerated into bloody wars of often shocking brutality. The New World Order promised by President Bush and the United Nations immediately after the Gulf War has become a new world disorder where anarchy, chaos and brutal violence are widespread. Yet geography made the violence of Srebrenica unique in two ways.