prijava
SARAJEVO, June 20 (FENA) - The Union for Sustainable Return and Integration of BiH is dedicating today's World Refugee Day to BiH diaspora with the message that more than two million Bosnians and Herzegovinians who fled abroad in the 1990s are now three decades old. Since the beginning of the war in the former Yugoslavia and in BiH, a strong and well-integrated diaspora deserves to have an institutional department in the country of its origin, i.e. a ministry for the diaspora at the state level.
During thirty years of the Alliance of Refugees and Displaced Persons, which has been transformed into the Union for Sustainable Return and Integration in BiH and its connection with the BiH diaspora, Zukić assesses that there is an obvious need to establish a ministry for the diaspora, which would be an 'address' for many issues of people who, now the third generation, live outside BiH.
“Financial, economic, professional, political, sociological and cultural ... these are all issues and areas that have significant potential for both the diaspora and the state of BiH, and represent mutual interest,” Mirhunisa Zukić, President of the Union for Sustainable Return and Integration of BiH, told FENA on the occasion of World Refugee Day.
The most obvious confirmation of that was during the world economic crisis, when economic experts pointed out the remittances that the BiH diaspora realizes in our country, helping their relatives and friends and whose inflow of money is measured in billions annually, which significantly affects economic trends in BiH.
Examples of organizing the diaspora through associations are worth mentioning, such as the World Diaspora Alliance of BiH (SSDBIH), which was founded by the then Refugee Alliance in 2002 and which has been emphasizing the need to establish a diaspora ministry at the BiH level for 20 years. The World Alliance of the Diaspora of BiH believes that the Office for the Diaspora at the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees of BiH is insufficient, given the number of issues concerning two million people who reside outside BiH.
With the message that the political and economic situation in the world and BiH are of special importance, integrating the international potential of the diaspora and its lobbying possibilities are of great benefit to BiH, Zukić emphasizes that it is high time to form a ministry for the diaspora.
The partnership between the diaspora and the state of BiH is a mutual need, is the message of the Union for Sustainable Return and Integration of BiH on the occasion of the World Refugee Day.
(FENA) A. B.
