EUROPEAN MIGRANT CRISIS

In August 2018 I had the opportunity to visit a migrant center in the town of Bihać, near the Bosnian-Croatian (EU) border. The migrants in the center, among them women and children, came mostly from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria and Iraq. The migrant center – a derelict and devastated dormitory – could hardly be called a proper facility to accommodate human beings.

Since the start of year 2018 at least 11,000 migrants entered Bosnia and Herzegovina illegally and the state authorities were taken by surprise. The ill-equipped local authorities of Bihać, a war-scarred town that survived several years of a devastating siege by the Serb armed forces, and the local Red Cross office, are doing their best to help the people stranded in their town – in spite of the odds. The only building available in town that could accommodate this number of people  was cleaned from trash, electricity installed, mobile toilets and showers installed, trash bins put in place, three meals distributed daily, medical assistance available at location, etc.

A Red Cross representative on the ground told me up to 1,000 people lived in the building and in the tents around it. A few days after my visit i heard the news that the Bosnian Council of Ministers decided to invest funds toward creating more humane conditions in the migrant center.

By now the majority of migrants who smuggled themselves to Bosnia from the neighboring Montenegro and Serbia already managed to leave the migrant center and are heading to EU countries, mostly Italy and France. As I was leaving this sad place my hopes were that the people stranded here would find a safer place, somewhere else, before the harsh Bosnian winter bites…