Although it has fallen into the background due to the war in Ukraine and the Ukrainian refugee crisis, the migrant crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina is still our everyday life. According to data from the non-governmental sector, more than 70,000 migrants have entered our country so far, and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has sentenced smugglers to more than 60 years in prison.
Non-governmental organizations estimate that migrant smuggling in Bosnia and Herzegovina is an illegal activity worth between seven and ten million euros. Last year alone, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina concluded 36 processes related to the smuggling of migrants, and so far about 140 convictions have been handed down.
Regardless of the reduced flow of migrants and increased controls, smugglers are becoming more imaginative.
“In practice, everything is possible, all those people who deal with it no longer care if they are going to transfer people or weapons or anything that can be smuggled and that brings a quick profit. In some past period, we used to record, for example, illegal migrants in the cargo areas – they crawl into the goods, cut the tarpaulin, the safety ropes that are sealed,” says Mladen Bogicevic from the Northeast Field Office of the BiH Border Police.
The Drina River is still a turning point where the police arrest several hundred smugglers every year.
“I guess that’s how the flows are, I guess those smugglers up there find easier routes to transfer migrants across the water,” added Bogicevic.
The results of OSCE research in Bosnia and Herzegovina are also worrying, which show that people smuggling is increasingly associated with terrorism.
“There are many similarities between these two problems and the conclusion is that terrorist groups, in both of these cases, use two methods of recruiting and forcing people to use them for their needs, which is coercion and fraud,” says the OSCE coordinator for combating trafficking.
The OSCE Mission points out that they continuously cooperate with local partners and institutions.
“This includes ensuring greater protection and support for victims of these serious crimes, as well as ensuring appropriate institutional and legislative measures, i.e. instruments,” explains Rebecca Agule from the Rule of Law Department of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to data from the non-governmental sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are currently about two thousand migrants staying in reception centers and slightly more than 300 migrants outside of these centers, BHRT writes.
