U Bosnia and Herzegovina currently resides about a thousand migrants, and if Great Britain's plan to return migrants to the Balkan countries turns out to be correct, there could be many and more of them. What are the consequences?
It has been seven years since the first wave of migrants who entered Bosnia and Herzegovina in large numbers, after Hungary and Croatia closed their borders in 2015. Since then, thousands of migrants have lived on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some stayed in the country, and some found refuge in the countries of the European Union and Great Britain, it says Deutsche Wellee.
The latter could suffer the same fate of returning to BiH, if the British government's plan to reach an agreement with Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Albania turns out to be correct (whose Prime Minister Edi Rama has already rejected such a possibility).
However, the United States has reached an agreement with Kosovo to house about 50 migrants who will be deported from the US, which could be a confirmation of earlier announcements that the Trump administration will use the Western Balkans as a center for deportations.
Migrant trafficking
As far as Bosnia and Herzegovina is concerned, the issue has become topical again after the migrant waves of the past few years, in which dozens of migrants lost their lives when crossing the border illegally. Everything took on a political dimension, because the announcement from Great Britain about deportations to BiH cannot be implemented until the readmission agreement is signed, which requires the consent of all three ethnic parties in BiH. This will hardly happen, unless there is some hidden interest or "debt repayment".
In Republika Srpska, they were the first to oppose such a plan. That is why a session of the National Assembly of the RS has been scheduled, which should take a position on the issue of migrants on the territory of that entity - even though there is no official confirmation, nor the possibility of deportation, because there are no agreements for this.
"We will not be a parking lot for that while I lead Republika Srpska," said Milorad Dodik. "Bosnia and Herzegovina will not sign an agreement with any European country to accept migrants that they invited to come to them. We did not invite them and we do not want to clean up their dirt that they left behind in this regard," emphasized the President of RS. He sent the Parliament an initiative to consider information about migrants in order, as he explained, to "take measures regarding the announcement of the governments of Great Britain and other countries" in time.
Dodik also accused the opposition from Republika Srpska - which in recent months has been trying to oust his SNSD party from state power - of being ready to do anything for several positions in Sarajevo, including the import of migrants.
A member of the Main Board of the opposition SDS, Marinko Božović, immediately responded: "If they offered you that in order to remove the sanctions, you wouldn't think for a second," Božović wrote on the X network in response to Dodik.
Arrival of migrants in closed camps?
There are currently four camps for the reception of migrants in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Lipa and Borići near Bihać, as well as Blažuj and Ušivak in Sarajevo Canton. Due to the high security risk, an initiative was launched to urgently close the Blažuj camp.
"The migrant camp and all the crime we are witnessing, including murders, create a huge problem for the local population and the development of the municipality of Ilidža," said SDP BiH deputy in the state parliament Saša Mangisanović, who initiated the initiative.
However, in order to close a camp, it is necessary to open a new one that would meet all the needs for the temporary reception of migrants, according to the Service for Affairs with Foreigners. Therefore, at this moment it is almost impossible to close the camp, because it would mean determining a new location, which is almost impossible to find due to the resistance of the population.
"No matter what kind of migrants, that's enough. We accepted them, and then there's nothing they don't do" - "I would drive them all out of here. Let them return to their countries or let them go to Europe. They opened the borders for them," the citizens of Sarajevo tell us.
"British Friends"
Not much has passed since the biggest migrant crisis in BiH, when the Lipa camp near Bihac was set on fire, and after the reception centers in Bihac and Cazin were closed, the migrants were deported to Sarajevo in 2021. Hundreds of migrants then waited for days for the decision of the authorities, considering that no canton wanted to receive them from the Una-Sana canton, after the closing of the Vučjak camp.
Although four camps were established after that, the security situation in them is extremely unfavorable, so the population, as well as some politicians, demand the closure of some of them - especially after announcements that their number could increase, if the announcements about their deportation to the countries of the Western Balkans turn out to be true.
On the other hand, BiH Minister of Foreign Affairs Elmedin Konaković says that he has no information about the possible deportation of migrants, but adds that he is ready to talk: "We will never be part of the solution to someone's problem. If it is the initiative of our friends from Great Britain, we will seriously and reasonedly say what BiH can and cannot do," says Konaković.
Migrant warehouse
The Service for Affairs with Foreigners in Bosnia and Herzegovina responds that under these conditions, the acceptance of migrants from Great Britain is impossible. "I don't see how they intend to carry it out. BiH has not signed any agreement with Great Britain," said the director of the Service for Affairs with Foreigners, Žarko Laketa, to the media in BiH.
The organization Human Rights Watch, on the occasion of the initiative to establish the so-called of the Center for Return in Third Countries for Asylum Seekers, announced that the European Union and Great Britain should stop using the Balkans as a "warehouse for migrants".
"Instead of treating the Balkans as a warehouse for migrants, the European Union and Great Britain could play an important role in supporting the development of functional asylum systems and better frameworks for the protection of migrants' rights," said the organization for the protection of human rights, citing the example of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a country that is already used "as a dumping ground for people who happen to be in transit to the EU."
