Bosnia and Herzegovina: additional CEB grant support for migrants and refugees

Bosnia and Herzegovina: additional CEB grant support for migrants and refugees

The Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) approved the allocation of a €150,000 grant from its Social Dividend Account to cover for the provision of non-food items (e.g. blankets, sleeping bags, raincoats, warm clothes, and shoes, tailored hygiene products) to migrants transiting or present in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The grant is estimated to benefit about 1,000 persons for a period of two months during winter.

The grant follows on the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović’s visit to the informal camp in Vucjak, in early December 2019, and her call for the imminent relocation of the people staying in that camp and for additional humanitarian assistance. It complements the €1.4 million grant that has already been mobilised by the CEB, from the Migrant and Refugee Fund (MRF), for the rehabilitation of the Ušivak temporary reception centre and the provision of assistance and protection services to vulnerable migrants. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the CEB’s principal partner for MRF-funded actions on the Balkan Route, will manage the provision of non-food items inside and, if possible, outside the existing temporary reception centres.

There has been a steady increase in the number of migrants entering Bosnia and Herzegovina beginning with 2017, with 28,277 migrants recorded by December 2019, compared to 755 in early 2017. The international community, in cooperation with the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have mobilised significant resources in order to ensure emergency accommodation as well as humanitarian assistance and protection.

“International financial institutions and development banks have an active role to play in supporting states receiving migrants and refugees. The CEB has always acted on this principle and on the principle of solidarity. We are standing by Bosnia and Herzegovina, our international partners, and most importantly the refugees and migrants currently present in our member countries in Europe,” said Rolf Wenzel, the Governor of the CEB. “The €28 million of the Migrant and Refugee Fund, set up by the CEB in 2015, has been fully allocated but the Bank is continuously looking into ways of responding to the needs of the most vulnerable in Europe, including migrants and refugees, under its new Development Plan,” he concluded.

The authorities and the UN, with EU support, have opened four temporary reception centres (TRC) since the end of 2017. The CEB has helped upgrade the Ušivak TRC in Hadžići, south of Sarajevo, while works on a sixth centre in Blažuj (Tomislavgrad), with EU and the German Federal Civil Protection Agency’s support, are about to be completed. In addition to these, there are informal migrant camps, such as the one in Vucjak, which was closed in December 2019 and which brought an additional 700 migrants to the existing TRCs.

Original source: CEB
Published on 27 January 2019