To mark July 11 - the International Day of Remembrance for the genocide in Srebrenica - a commemorative event will be held in Parliament today. The ceremony takes place in the "Boris Trajkovski" hall, honouring the victims of one of the darkest crimes on European soil since the Second World War.

Srebrenica is not distant history for the Balkans - it is a wound the region still carries. Thirty years later, remembrance endures not to reignite old divisions, but for the exact opposite reason: to refuse forgetting, which is the first step toward repetition. Nations that do not face their past are condemned to live it again.

The fact that Parliament marks this day is an act that matters. Institutional memory is different from the personal kind - it is a message from a state that it acknowledges what happened and stands on the side of the victims, not neutral silence. In the Balkans, where part of politics still feeds on denying and relativising these crimes, a gesture like this carries weight.

Commemoration brings no one back and changes no facts. But it does something important - it keeps memory awake and gives a voice to those who can no longer speak. The question every such observance leaves behind is not about the past but about the future: did we truly learn something, or do we simply know how to remember nicely once a year and look the other way the rest of the time?