According to humanitarian organizations, hundreds of migrants slept in open or abandoned buildings in icy temperatures this month as snow covered the mountains in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Some of those housed in a destroyed migrant camp had to resort to washing themselves in the snow due to lack of heated facilities or to stand barefoot to receive food. Many suffer from scabies and high fever.
The mayor of the city of Bihac, 15 kilometers north of the camp, refused to reopen a housing facility for migrants funded by the European Union, which worked for almost two years until it closed in the autumn. . Now aid organizations and the military are trying to provide humanitarian relief as temperatures have dropped below 15 degrees Fahrenheit at night.
“It’s an uninhabitable place. We are not talking about complying with the basic humanitarian standards even here, ”said Nicola Bay, country director of the Danish Refugee Council, which provided winter clothing and medical assistance to the migrants.
The extreme cold is just the latest misery in a saga that has unfolded over the years, and which took a dark turn last month when humanitarian organizations had to dismantle the Lipa camp after it was considered unsafe. While migrants evacuated, a fire destroyed most of the tents there and forced them to take refuge in the hulls of the destroyed camp, or in abandoned buildings and icy wooded areas around it.
More than 1,700 people have slept outside in the difficult conditions, the European Union said this month.
On New Year’s Eve, Bosnian authorities promised to move the stranded migrants “very quickly” to the nearby housing facility in Bihac. But two weeks into 2021, the facility remained closed, and a Bosnian government minister acknowledged that it would likely remain so.
Bosnia is facing increasing criticism from the European Union and others for failing to provide basic humanitarian aid to migrants as required by international law.
“Hundreds of people, including children, are sleeping outside in icy temperatures in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Janez Lenarcic, the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, said earlier this month. “This humanitarian disaster can be avoided if the authorities create sufficient overwintering capacity in the country, inter alia by using existing facilities.”
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 for the influx of migrants to its outer borders. (Bosnia is not part of the European Union, but it borders Croatia.)
Yet the coronavirus pandemic has brought the movement of migrants along the Western Balkan route to a near halt, and according to the International Organization for Migration, an agency of the United Nations, more than 8,000 migrants have been stranded in Bosnia. While 6,000 of them are in housing centers, nearly 2,000 remain in difficult conditions throughout the country.
Last year, 17,000 migrants were registered by Bosnia, compared to 29,000 in 2019. But human rights organizations say the crisis was worse this winter due to the authorities’ failure to accommodate them.
The migrants in northwestern Bosnia are facing increasing hostility from local populations.
In October, local authorities, who had been complaining for years about the plight of the European Union’s migration problems, put more than 400 migrants out of the now closed accommodation in Bihac, and they have kept it closed ever since. More than 80 minors were relocated to other housing centers, but more than 300 men left no shelter.
Most of them moved to the Lipa camp, which was set up in April as a temporary response to the Covid-19 pandemic to house up to 1,600 people. The camp has never been isolated or equipped with a furnace, and organizations say they have told authorities it could only be a temporary solution.
Last month, it was demolished and destroyed by fire.
Across a dirt road from the former Lipa camp, Bosnian military forces set up about 20 heated tents this week, half of which have holes cut by icy winds, according to Mr. Bay of the Danish Refugee Council. Hundreds of migrants are still housed in the tents run by the Red Cross.
About 1,500 other migrants remained in the ruins of the former 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 site in Bihac intended to accommodate migrants, and on the other hand, local authorities and people have refused to let them in,” said Peter Van der Auweraert, the Western Balkans, said. coordinator for the International Organization for Migration. “Migrants are trapped in this.”
Selmo Cikotic, Bosnia’s Minister of Security, acknowledged that the situation was unsustainable and that migrants were the victims of Bosnia’s political disorder.
According to the Bosnian Constitution, both the central government and the local administrations, known as cantons, are responsible for upholding human rights. The regulation of the use of local land falls under the local authorities, who also control police forces.
“There is, from some elements of Bosnia’s political system, a lack of solidarity, a lack of respect for European and universal values that we considered ourselves to be close to,” he said. Cikotic said in a telephone interview. “We have no functioning mechanism to correct the resistance of the authorities in the canton,” he added, referring to the Una-Sana area, the home of the Lipa camp and Bihac.
Mr. Cikotic, who met with European Union ambassadors and representatives of the European Union in the Lipa camp on Thursday, ruled out the use of force to open the housing facility in Bihac.
This angered humanitarian organizations.
“Every year we have this winter crisis and at the last minute an emergency response is set up,” said Mr. Bay of the Danish Refugee Council said. “But this year we are not doing it, and you can see how fragile the situation is,” he added.
They ask, ‘When am I going to go to a tent? he said of the migrants. “They have no idea what’s happening to them.”
On the Croatian side, the police tried to block the route from Bosnia, and humanitarian organizations reported numerous abuses by law enforcement.
Aleksandar Panic, coordinator of the Bosnian Red Cross disaster preparedness, said that some migrants had given up hope of reaching the European Union through Croatia, and that they would rather go to Serbia, on the eastern border with Bosnia. , returning in the hope of making their way to the European Union through Romania.
“Meanwhile, the camps in Sarajevo are full, and around the Lipa camp, the weather forecast is not going in our favor,” he said. Panic said. “We do not know if we can make the tents enough.”