Germany will contribute additional 190,000 euros (218,063 U.S. dollars) to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) Armed Forces for marking and registration of weapons, the Germany embassy in BiH said Friday in a statement.
“With this project, the German embassy wants to provide support to the BiH Ministry of Defense for the implementation of strategy for registration of small arms in the period from 2016 to 2020,” a Chargé d’affairesof the Germany Embassy Christian Sedat said at the press conference on Friday.
Sedat explained that the money will be used for making a comprehensive list of inventories in the storage areas used by BiH Armed Forces, marking and registration of weapons that will enter into the central register. Also, money will be used for training of members of BiH Armed Forces in cooperation with EUFOR.
He added that the program of marking will be done in two phases that will last in total three years, and that the first phase was already completed. After the agreement signing ceremony, “The HALO Trust “ organization project manager Alexander Maier said the joint project with BiH Ministry of Defense has officially started in 2017, adding that in 2018, a special base for registration and machines for marking will be procured.
The project is planned to finish by the end of 2019, when the teams will perform the marking and registration of the light and small arms owned by BiH Armed Forces, and in that way, will bring BiH a step further in meeting international guidelines, a press statement said.
The “Weapon Marking” project has already been funded by Germany in November 2017 with some 150,000 euros (172,077 U.S. dollars), when two marking machines were procured and teams went through a special training in the sphere of marking and registration of weapons.
Due to the 1990s war, BiH has a large stock of excess weapons and ammunition. In BiH, there are still about 15,000 tons of ammunition stock and 40,000 pieces of weapons, which are mostly over 35 years old.
Approximately 14,600 tons of ammunition have been destroyed in the past ten years in BiH.
