Bosnia and Herzegovina: Broader and improved support for durable solutions required

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^{31 December 2010}

The 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina led to the internal displacement of over a million people and the creation of ethnically homogeneous areas within the newly independent state. Estimates of the number of people remaining internally displaced fell following successive registration exercises. At the end of 2010, 113,400 IDPs remained, many of them older or vulnerable people who needed specific assistance. 7,000 IDPs were still living in decrepit collective centres.

By 2010, 580,000 IDPs had returned to their places of origin, but the rate of return had considerably slowed. Violence in return areas had declined, but discrimination continued to limit returnees’ access to livelihoods and public services.

Many IDPs and returnees continued to live in precarious situations, with no adequate housing, economic opportunities or support. In December, flash floods in the north and east led to the evacuation of 40,000 people, including about 10,000 IDPs, from their damaged or destroyed properties. Social services were provided

in different areas by the two governing entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Sprska; as a result pensions and other social benefits were lower in certain areas. From the end of the war, the government and international agencies promoted return to the exclusion of other settlement options, so as not to cement the “ethnic cleansing” which motivated the displacement. However, in June 2010, the government adopted a new strategy recognising the need to compensate people for lost property and to assist IDPs who

cannot or do not want to return. Only a few international organisations were still working

to support IDPs, among them OSCE, UNHCR and UNDP. The EU also continued to influence government policy in favour of IDPs through the process of Bosnia’s candidacy.

Despite its historic policy of exclusively supporting the return of IDPs to their places of origin, the government in Bosnia and Herzegovina has increasingly recognised the need to assist the most vulnerable among them, who cannot or do not want to return. The Gornja Kolonija collective centre in the town of Jablanica, where more than 1,500 IDPs had taken refuge during the conflict, was closed in September 2010, after the last nine residents had been rehoused in a new four-storey block built on land provided by the Jablanica municipal authorities.  

In the general elections held in early October, IDPs were able to register to vote either in the municipalities where they lived prior to 1991 (in person or by absentee ballot) or in the municipalities where they now live. Over 22,000 chose to vote in their municipalities of origin. In 2009, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated the number of IDPs in Bosnia and Herzegovina at almost 114,000.