Bosnia’s northwestern Una-Sana Canton (USK) can accommodate up to 1,500 migrants in one camp and have two additional camps to house migrants belonging to vulnerable categories, local authorities told a parliamentary commission on security on Thursday according to USK Interior Minister, Nermin Kljajic.
The USK is the area most affected by the migrant crisis in the country as it is located at the border with Croatia, where most of the migrants entering Bosnia and Herzegovina try to cross over into the European Union. The local population and authorities in the USK have been complaining that the burden of the migrant crisis is not being distributed fairly across the country and that state authorities have let them down in terms of responding to the situation.
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USK authorities told the members of the Commission that neither the facility of Bira in the town of Bihac, nor Miral in Velika Kladusa would have ever been turned into migrant reception centres if they had a say in it and that even the Lipa camp, which is being winterised for migrants, is a questionable location for accommodating them in terms of security.
The crime rate in Bihac was much higher when the Bira was open in 2018 and 2019 and number of crimes, misdemeanours and other incidents drastically decreased once it was shut down, he said.
“We have told the Commission that one camp should be located in the USK that could house 1,500 people,” he said, adding that local authorities also have nothing against two other camps that would house migrants that belong to vulnerable categories remaining open. “The state must answer the question of how many migrants can be in BiH and how many camps there can be. At the moment, we have about 6,000 migrants in BiH,” he stressed.
If the approach of state authorities toward the migrant crisis does not change there will be a “humanitarian crisis” in the winter of 2021, he said, explaining that there is a large number of migrants on the streets and staying in abandoned buildings because of the lack of an estimate on how many migrants could be staying in an area at a given time.
“There is still a number of migrants in abandoned facilities and after the capacities in Lipa are established with the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs, we will start creating better conditions for those migrants,” he said.
The USK can not accommodate more than 1,500 migrants and state authorities must “get involved and give an answer as to why we always have a larger number of migrants in relation to accommodation capacities,” he said, adding that at the moment, there are about 3,000 migrants in the USK.
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