prijava
SARAJEVO, February 20 (FENA) - Representatives of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) presented today in Sarajevo the current situation in the field of migration and asylum in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to the UNHCR Representative in BiH, Anne-Christine Eriksson, the data show that there has been an increase in asylum requests and that the needs of asylum seekers, above all, are food, accommodation and health care.
Last year, 376 requests for asylum were received in BiH, and 43 percent of applicants left BiH before the end of the year. That is 475 percent more asylum requests compared to 2016.
Also, data show that while the number of asylum applications increased significantly in December 2017, it fell in January 2018.
On this basis, the IOM Representative in BiH, Peter van der Auweraert, pointed out that there was no crisis in the field of asylum in BiH.
This is, as he explains, just a temporary challenge for the authorities to adapt to the new situation in which no new influx of refugees is expected.
The participants of today's presentation said that 49 percent of all migrants that have been discovered in Bosnia and Herzegovina arrived from Turkey, Kosovo and Algeria.
When it comes to the expressed intention to seek asylum in BiH, the most represented countries of origin in the past year were Algeria, Pakistan, as well as Syria and Afghanistan, which share the third place.
The cause of the current situation in BiH lies in the fact that since January 2015 more than a million migrants and refugees have arrived in Greece with the intention to continue their path toward other EU countries, and in 2016 a corridor, that was open to their movement through region towards the EU, was officially closed.
In recent months, they have increasingly used the route through Albania, Montenegro and BiH in an attempt to reach Croatia. This has increased the risk for endangered refugees and migrants, and especially for unaccompanied children who turned to smugglers for help. Their transit through the region takes place in secret, which makes it much more difficult to identify and help those who need urgent protection, stated the participants of today's UNHCR and IOM’s presentation on the situation of refugees and migrants in BiH.
(FENA)
Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /var/www/vhosts/fena.ba/httpdocs/post-new.php on line 215
