Bihac local authorities held an emergency meeting on the topic of illegal migrants whose number is reaching a critical level. Several local institutions, including the Islamic Community representatives in Bihac, requested an emergency meeting with the Mayor and state officials to seek advice on this issue.

Namely, the city of Bihac is one of the key stopping points on the migrant route to EU countries and now the situation in Bihac has become critical. The migrants are mostly unregistered and they do not have their housing status resolved. The migrants sleep on the streets, benches and abandoned buildings.  

Earlier this month Bosnia and Herzegovina's Security Minister Dragan Mektic said that the number of illegal migrants coming into Bosnia has increased by 500 percent. However, the Mayor of Bihac Suhret Fazlic said that prior to the meeting he felt paranoid, but after the meeting, he started panicking because the City of Bihac and the Una-Sana Canton, one of ten cantons in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity, are powerless compared to the size of the problem.

He characterized the migrant problem as a humanitarian and a security issue. 

“I've become aware of this issue during the winter when migrants started gathering in mosques. This wouldn't be a problem if we had a group of migrants whose number is definite and known. We are facing two problems here. The first is that we don't know their exact number, and the second is that we don't know how many of them will come to Bihac,” Fazlic said.  

The meeting was attended by representatives of the Cantonal Interior Ministry and the police, International Organization for Migrations (IOM), several NGOs, the OSCE, healthcare institutions, the Border Police, and the Office for Foreigners’ Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Fazlic holds the Bosnian Security Ministry responsible for the situation because this problem is neither in the jurisdiction of the City of Bihac nor of the Una-Sana Canton.  

“I saw no particular use of this meeting. The meeting was attended by the people who have done something within the limits of their capabilities. I'd stress the NGO's who have been the only people in the field trying to cope with this problem. All the other participants of the meeting are incapable of doing anything on this matter,” Fazlic said and pointed out that “all the competencies and mechanisms to deal with this issue are at the level of the State Security Ministry who didn't attend the meeting.”  

Fazlic also warned that now that the tourist season is approaching the situation will be close to unbearable.

In the end, the meeting ended with two conclusions. The first is that Mayor Fazlic will meet with the Director of the Red Cross and NGO representatives to try to do something for the migrants, so they would not starve and that they have a place to take a bath. The second is to try to form a crisis body at the Cantonal level and to send requests to state agencies to do something about this problem.