Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, said in a letter to Bosnian officials that a lack of action and coordination between the country’s multiple governments could have serious effects for migrants and asylum seekers left without housing, food, and medical care.

Ethnically-divided Bosnia has become a transit route for migrants and refugees from Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa since European Union countries shut their borders to new arrivals in 2015. Many have made their way to Bosnia’s northwest hoping to slip into EU member Croatia just to the west.

There are up to 10,000 migrants in Bosnia now, a quarter of whom sleep rough in the woods, abandoned buildings, and by roadsides, keen to move on westwards because Bosnia has few resources to provide them.

In October, the authorities in the northwestern town of Bihac closed its biggest migrant centre and moved hundreds of people to the Lipa camp 50 miles away, which was already full.

The International Organisation for Migration, which oversees all migrant facilities in Bosnia, on Friday stopped funding the Lipa camp because the authorities have failed to ensure the necessary conditions to make it suitable for winter, IOM head Peter Van der Auweraert told N1 television.

He said the government needed to provide an alternative centre for some 1,500 people from the camp, otherwise they would have to join another 1,500 people already sleeping rough.

Bosnia’s authorities cannot agree on where to accommodate the migrants. All migrant facilities are in the autonomous Bosniak-Croat Federation, while the other region, the Serb Republic, refuses to take in any migrants.

The European Union delegation has also urged action amid the coronavirus pandemic to avert a humanitarian crisis.

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Fahrudin Radoncic, the Bosnian security minister, is warning the European Union that there might be up to 100,000 migrants heading to Western Europe through Greece in the coming weeks.

“Our border is very permeable. We don’t have enough (guards) or material resources,” said Radoncic, explaining why Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot serve as a buffer that would stop the influx of migrants.

In the meantime, Greece also paints a grim picture of the situation. As most of the migrants coming to Europe enter the continent in Greece, local government forecasts an increase in newly arrived migrants.

According to Greece’s migration ministry secretary Manos Logothetis, Greece expects about 100,000 new migrants this year as well.

At the end of last year, Hungary also announced that it is preparing for the 100,000 immigrants who are gathering in the Western Balkans and are ready to enter deeper into Europe.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, which could help to stop some of the migrants lacks at least 1,200 border guards to be able to monitor the borders sufficiently, stated Radoncic, adding that currently for every 25 kilometers of the border, there is only one police officer.

Besides, the situation in Bosnian migrant camps is getting so much worse as the camps struggle with enormous overcrowding, reported Austrian tabloid Kronen Zeitung.

An example of the bleak situation is the Vucjak migrant camp near the border with Croatia. Many criticized the camp for unsatisfactory conditions with the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) organization labeling the camp a “dangerous and inhumane place.”

The government decided to clear the camp in December 2019 and transfer the migrants to another area near Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) regional coordinator Peter Van der Auweraert, when the weather in the area gets better, some migrants might get on the move, especially as Bosnia and Herzegovina is just a transit country.

However, other parts of the Balkan route have noticed an increase in activity. In January, for example, 3,400 migrants attempted, some of them violently, to cross the border between Serbia and Hungary despite the border fence.

Source: https://rmx.news/article/article/bosnian-minister-100-000-migrants-on-their-way-to-the-eu

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