The Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), headed by Dubravka Bosnjak, despite the efforts of foreign donors, according to messages from Germany, obstructs and does not cooperate enough with the completion of the demining process of our country, even though it is one of BiH’s international obligations.
As a result, BiH will not meet the demining deadline of 2027, despite the fact that the original deadline has already been breached (2025).
Such information was confirmed by the German embassy, which said that they were “more than concerned” by the actions of the Ministry.
Fewer and fewer donors
The number of international donors involved in humanitarian demining has significantly decreased in recent years. In addition to the funds of the Council of Ministers, humanitarian demining is funded by fewer and fewer donors every year.
Since 1997, Germany has invested more than 45 million euros in demining.
“As far as is known in the German embassy, the Ministry of Civil Affairs plans to fill less than a quarter of the currently vacant positions only this year. This worries us because it is evident that even with greater provision of funds for humanitarian demining, it is difficult to start a new project because the necessary staff in the BiH Mine Action Center (BHMAC) is lacking. As far as we know, this also applies to BHMAC’s material resources, which are no longer sufficient for the adequate performance of tasks,” the German embassy said.
They emphasized that these problems are known to the Demining Commission, which is subordinate to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
“However, it is not clear to us as the embassy what the ministry itself intends to do to eliminate the known problems and improve the obviously insufficient budget for demining. Therefore, as an embassy, that has been intensively dealing with the field of humanitarian demining in BiH for more than 25 years, we are more than concerned that the goal of ‘BiH without mines’ by 2027 can be achieved at all. Based on the current average cleaning effect this year, without a significant increase in the average annual effect, this goal can only be achieved around 2035,” the German embassy claims, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
