Who has sovereignty in managing the migrant crisis?

By: Nela Bajić

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Several institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina bear responsibility for bringing the migrant crisis to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. Unlike the countries in the region, where crisis management was taken over by the entire executive branch in cooperation with the legislative branch, in our country, the Ministry of Security has been the only one dealing with migrant situation issues so far.
The issue of managing the migrant crisis is the responsibility of the Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the support of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees and the Office of the Ombudsman.

During his visit to Bihać this week, Security Minister Fahrudin Radončić sent messages to the public that exposed the inability of state institutions to deal with the migrant crisis, primarily the ministry he took over two months ago.

The Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina lacks 1,200 police officers; one police officer protects 25 kilometers of the state border. The number of employees missing from the Service for Foreigners' Affairs has not been specified.

Radončić emphasized that Bosnia and Herzegovina has no sovereignty in managing the migrant crisis. His predecessors ceded sovereignty to international organizations, specifically the IOM, the International Organization for Migration, unlike other countries where financial aid for solving the migrant crisis was paid directly to their governments.

When it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the European Union, through two donor programs (DG ECHO and DG NEAR), decided to channel the money to the IOM, which then allocated the funds. Of the 40 million euros paid to the IOM, Bosnia and Herzegovina received slightly less than 4 million for administrative costs.

All organizations involved in the migrant crisis, and the list is quite long, are primarily humanitarian in nature. Humanitarian organizations have neither the interests, capacities, nor mechanisms to protect the interests of all actors involved in the current migration process. Nor is it their job to protect state interests.

In well-ordered countries, these organizations play the role of partners in providing assistance within established mechanisms for dealing with crisis situations. Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only country that has allowed humanitarian organizations to be the absolute bearers of management on this issue.

From the podium in Bihać, it was firmly conveyed to European Union officials that Bosnia and Herzegovina will not become a collective reception center for “illegal migrants.” The truth is that migrants reside illegally on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina due to systematic failures of Bosnian-Herzegovinian institutions. The Service for Foreigners' Affairs, which should be working on identifying and registering migrants, has done nothing to hire Arabic-speaking officers, which would enable communication with migrants, so these “conversations” are reduced to pantomime between officers and migrants, with officers unable to explain their rights and obligations.

Therefore, the data on individuals who go through the identification system and receive a so-called white card are of questionable credibility.

Furthermore, it was stated that the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina has the right to arrest migrants who cannot prove their identity, but it remains unclear where they plan to house them given the existing lack of prison capacity. The capacity of the only official Immigration Center in East Sarajevo, responsible for housing foreigners deemed a security threat, is just over a hundred places. Also, due to an uncoordinated system and lack of involvement of key actors, forced deportation does not function.

It is important to mention that despite the established terminology of Bosnian officials, the term illegal migrant does not exist. There are individuals who reside illegally on the territory of a certain state. From the perspective of respecting minimum human rights, using the term illegal for a person is politically incorrect. We do not call war criminals illegal, but rather their actions.
There is no doubt that Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a state, has the right to protect its borders. However, if it does not want to regress to 1945, it has an obligation to act in accordance with the conventions it has adopted and signed, i.e., to protect the basic human rights of all individuals on its territory. This implies that all relevant institutions must be involved in the migrant crisis issue, creating conditions for protecting the rights of both migrants and state interests.

From the messages we heard after the meeting held in Bihać, it seems we are on the right track to turning into Hungary. According to eyewitness accounts, the day after the meeting, police officers armed with electroshock devices appeared on the streets of Bihać.