Hundreds of migrants slept outdoors or in abandoned buildings in freezing temperatures this month, while snow covered the mountains of northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to humanitarian organizations.
Some of those who stayed at a destroyed migrant camp had to resort to a snow shower for lack of heating or to line up barefoot to receive food. Many suffer from scabies and high fever.
The mayor of the city of Bihac, 15 miles north of the countryside, refused to reopen a European Union-funded housing complex for migrants, which operated for almost two years until it closed in the fall. Aid organizations and the military are now struggling to provide humanitarian aid as temperatures have dropped below 15 degrees Fahrenheit at night.
“It is an unbearable place. We are not even talking about meeting basic humanitarian standards here, ”said Nicola Bay, the director of the Danish Refugee Council, who provided winter clothing and medical assistance to migrants.
The extreme cold is just the last misery in a saga that has unfolded over the years and took a dark turn last month, when humanitarian organizations had to dismantle Lipa’s camp after being considered unsafe. While the migrants evacuated, a fire destroyed most of the tents there, forcing them to take refuge in the shape of the destroyed camp or in abandoned buildings and surrounding areas of icy forest.
More than 1,700 people slept outdoors in harsh conditions, the European Union said this month.
On New Year’s Eve, Bosnian authorities promised to relocate migrants stranded to a nearby housing development in Bihac “very quickly”. But two weeks after the beginning of 2021, that facility remained closed and a Bosnian government minister acknowledged that it would likely remain so.
Bosnia has faced growing criticism from the European Union and other countries for failing to provide migrants with the basic humanitarian assistance required by international law.
“Hundreds of people, including children, are sleeping outdoors in low temperatures in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Janez Lenarcic, European commissioner for Crisis Management, earlier this month. “This humanitarian disaster could be avoided if the authorities created sufficient winter shelter capacity in the country, including the use of existing facilities available.”
Since Bosnia became a route for thousands of people hoping to reach Europe in 2018, the European Union has provided 89 million euros, or more than $ 108 million, to the country’s authorities or organizations working there, as part of a greater strategy to reduce the influx of migrants at its external borders. (Bosnia is not part of the European Union, but it borders Croatia, which is.)
However, the coronavirus pandemic has caused the movement of migrants along what is known as the Western Balkan route to almost stop completely, and more than 8,000 migrants are trapped in Bosnia, according to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency. While 6,000 of them are in housing centers, almost 2,000 remain in precarious conditions across the country.
Last year, 17,000 migrants were registered passing through Bosnia, up from 29,000 in 2019. But human rights organizations say the crisis has worsened this winter because of the authorities’ failure to accommodate them.
Migrants in northwestern Bosnia face growing animosity from local populations.
In October, regional authorities, who for years complained of bearing the brunt of the European Union’s migration problems, expelled more than 400 migrants from the now closed housing facilities in Bihac, and have kept them closed since then. More than 80 minors were transferred to other housing centers, but more than 300 men were left homeless.
Most of them moved to Lipa camp, which was established in April as a temporary response to the Covid-19 pandemic to accommodate up to 1,600 people. The camp was never isolated or equipped with heating stoves, and organizations say they told authorities that this could only be a temporary solution.
Then, last month, it was dismantled and destroyed by fire.
Across a dirt road from the old camp in Lipa, Bosnian military forces set up about 20 heated tents this week, half of which with holes that icy winds open, according to Bay of Denmark’s Refugee Council. Still, hundreds of migrants were accommodated in the tents, which are administered by the Red Cross.
About 1,500 other migrants stayed in the ruins of the old camp that burned last month or in abandoned buildings without electricity and running water nearby.
“On the one hand, the central government has tried to reopen the Bihac site that is intended to accommodate migrants, and on the other hand, local authorities and people have refused to let them in,” said Peter Van der Auweraert, of the Western Balkans. coordinator of the International Organization for Migration. “Migrants are caught in the middle of it.”
Selmo Cikotic, Bosnia’s security minister, acknowledged that the situation was unsustainable and that migrants were victims of Bosnia’s political disorder.
Both the central government and local administrations, known as cantons, are responsible for enforcing human rights, according to the Bosnian Constitution. But the regulation of local land use rests with the regional authorities, who also control police forces.
“There is, in some elements of Bosnia’s political system, a lack of solidarity, a lack of adherence to European and universal values to which we declare to be close,” said Cikotic in a telephone interview. “We have no mechanism in place to repair the resistance of the canton authorities,” he added of the Una-Sana area, where the Lipa and Bihac camp are located.
Cikotic, who met on Thursday with ambassadors from European countries and representatives of the European Union in the Lipa camp, ruled out using force to open the housing complex in Bihac.
This angered humanitarian organizations.
“Every year, we have this winter crisis and an emergency response is drawn up at the last minute,” said Bay, of the Danish Refugee Council. “But this year, we don’t know, and you see how fragile the situation is,” he added.
“They are asking, ‘When will I go to a tent?’ he said of the migrants. “They have no idea what’s going on with them.”
On the Croatian side, police tried to seal the Bosnia route and humanitarian organizations reported numerous abuses by police.
Aleksandar Panic, the Red Cross’s disaster preparedness coordinator in Bosnia, said that some migrants have abandoned hope of reaching the European Union through Croatia and are instead returning to Serbia, on the eastern border of Bosnia, in the hope to make their way to the European Union through Romania.
“Meanwhile, the camps in Sarajevo are full and, around Lipa camp, the weather is not going in our favor,” said Panic. “We don’t know if we will be able to heat the tents sufficiently.”