In 9 of 10 Cases, Authorities Blocking Refugee Return
GENEVA, April 19 (Reuters) — The U.N. refugee agency warned on Friday of the risk of fresh confrontations in Bosnia unless displaced Serbs, Croats and Muslims are allowed to visit their pre-war homes. Under the Dayton peace pact displaced people are officially guaranteed full freedom of movement, including the right to return home. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been encouraging refugees to make preliminary visits to see whether it would be safe to return.But UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said that in nine out of 10 cases, authorities were blocking visits to their areas by displaced minorities, leading for calls among the displaced for the visits to go ahead without permission. "No one's been hurt in these yet, but it's certainly got the potential for causing a major problem," Redmond told a news briefing. Redmond said a group of up to 180 Bosnian Serbs, frustrated at being refused access to their home town of Drvar by Bosnian Croats, were planning to cross Bosnia's internal border this weekend to visit their homes. They are currently living in the Banja Luka region.
"The risks of an organised visit of this type which does not enjoy the cooperation of both sides are, of course, obvious," he said. "We don't know whether they will actually do it, but without the cooperation of the authorities it could be a very difficult and dangerous situation."
Around 2.5 million Bosnians, more than half the country's pre-war population, were forced from their homes in 3 1/2 years of fighting. Around a million are still in Bosnia, 670,000 are in neighbouring ex-Yugoslav states, and 700,000 in other European countries. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata has acknowledged that many will never be able to — or never want to — return home and will have to be resettled.
UNHCR officials in Bosnia and abroad have received dozens of requests to help organize pre-return visits, sometimes by community elders nominated by groups of displaced to check on housing, schools and workplaces and to assess security. In only a few cases, however, have local authorities allowed them to visit, Redmond said, even within the Muslim-Croat Federation which should have no internal boundaries. "In signing the Dayton agreement each of the signatories committed their government to ensure complete freedom of movement across the inter-entity boundary lines and through the territory of the Federation and the Republika Srpska," he said. "But in practice these commitments have not been met by any of the parties.
"In nine out of 10 cases, requests that UNHCR has received to arrange or facilitate visits by internally displaced persons and refugees to their homes in minority areas both in the Federation and Republika Srpska have been blocked by local authorities. "The failure of the parties to permit freedom of movement, even small-scale visits by representatives of refugees and displaced — even for a few hours — has created a dangerous situation," he said.
Redmond added: "We believe it is critical for the parties to transmit clear instructions both to their local authorities on the organisation of these visits as well as to the local police to ensure that full freedom of movement and the necessary security is guaranteed.
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RefWorld Databases of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
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