Some 450,000 Bosnian refugees out of a total of 1.2 million who fled the country during the 1992-1995 war, returned to Bosnia, while 96,000 are internally displaced, Bosnia's Human Rights and Refugees Minister Semiha Borovac told N1 on the occasion of the World Refugee Day.

“On this day we speak about numbers and how many people returned to Bosnia and how many have not. Of the 1.2 million refugees, some 450,000 returned, meaning 750,000 of them never returned. They were taken in by the countries they fled to. Some 17,600 have the refugee status and more than 600,000 internally displaced persons have returned to their homes,” Minister Borovac said, adding that 96,000 persons remain internally displaces.

Of this number, 60,000 are in Bosnia's Serb-dominated, semi-autonomous entity of Republika Srpska (RS), 36,000 on the other semi-autonomous entity of the Federation (FBiH) which is shared by Bosniaks and Croats and in the northern Brcko District some 400 remain internally displaced, she noted.

But she pointed out that the return of internally displaced persons was not equally implemented.

“There are differences among Bosnia's entities. The RS entity implemented the policy of remaining on one's land more than they implemented the policy of return, while the FbiH entity implemented the return policy more,” She said.

She also mentioned the existence of 121 collective centres where refugees still live, waiting for the reconstruction of the old ones or construction of new homes.

“We have 7,200 internally displaces persons living there. These are people living in a difficult socio-economic status who've never had this issue resolved before. The State decided to tackle this issue with a €60 million from the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB),” the Minister stressed, noting that living conditions there are “pretty difficult and inhumane. I'm worried by the fact that this issue remained unresolved for so long. We're now working on this and we're not waiting for anyone.”