Srebrenica (Serbian Cyrillic: Сребреница, pronounced [srêbrenitsa]) is a town and municipality in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The earliest reference to the name Srebrenica was in 1376, by which time it was already an important centre for trade in the western Balkans, based especially on the silver mines of the region.

[10] With the town coming under Ottoman rule, becoming less influenced by the Republic of Ragusa, the economic importance of Srebrenica went into decline, as did the proportion of Christians in the population.

After participating in battles on the Drina (1804), Vasić asked Karađorđe for an army to liberate Osat; Lazar Mutap was dispatched and the region came under rebel rule.

The town came under Austro-Hungarian rule in 1878, when the Congress of Berlin approved the occupation of the Bosnia Vilayet, which later in 1908 became a condominium under the joint control of Austria and Hungary.

The Bohemian company Mattoni established a distribution infrastructure to tap and export the water named Guber-Quelle ("Guber Spring") throughout the monarchy and abroad.

[13] Modern infrastructure such as administration, electricity, roads, schools, telephone, healthcare, a postal service and other things were introduced.

During the First World War, one of the region's main battle areas was in Eastern Bosnia and the Drina, from where the units of Austria-Hungary advanced towards the Kingdom of Serbia.

Following World War I, Bosnia was incorporated into the South Slav kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which later was renamed Yugoslavia.

In the early days of the campaign of forcible transfer (ethnic cleansing) that followed the outbreak of war in April 1992 the town of Srebrenica was occupied by Serb/Serbian forces.

[17] Srebrenica and the other UN safe areas of Žepa and Goražde were isolated pockets of Bosnian government-held territory in eastern Bosnia.

In July 1995, despite the town's UN-protected status, it was attacked and captured by the Army of Republika Srpska led by general Ratko Mladić.

Following the town's capture, all men of fighting age who fell into Bosnian Serb hands were massacred in a systematically organised series of summary executions.

[19] In 2001, the Srebrenica massacre was determined by judgement of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to have been a crime of genocide (confirmed on appeal in 2004).

The Bosnian Institute in the United Kingdom has published a list of 296 villages destroyed by Serb forces around Srebrenica three years before the genocide and in the first three months of war (April–June 1992):[23] More than three years before the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, Bosnian Serb nationalists – with the logistical, moral and financial support of Serbia and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) – destroyed 296 predominantly Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) villages in the region around Srebrenica, forcibly uprooting some 70,000 Bosniaks from their homes and systematically massacring at least 3,166 Bosniaks (documented deaths) including many women, children and the elderly.According to the Naser Orić trial judgement:[24] "Between April 1992 and March 1993, Srebrenica town and the villages in the area held by Bosnian Muslims were constantly subjected to Serb military assaults, including artillery attacks, sniper fire, as well as occasional bombing from aircraft.

Serb soldiers and paramilitaries surrounded a Bosnian Muslim village or hamlet, called upon the population to surrender their weapons, and then began with indiscriminate shelling and shooting.

In most cases, they then entered the village or hamlet, expelled or killed the population, who offered no significant resistance and destroyed their homes.

The following table gives a preview of total number of registered people employed in legal entities per their core activity (as of 2018):[36] Una-Sana  Central Bosnia Posavina  Herzegovina-Neretva Tuzla  West Herzegovina Zenica-Doboj  Sarajevo Bosnian Podrinje Canton 10