24 January 2021: A migrant living at the abandoned metal factory in Bihać bundles himself up against the cold outside his ‘room’.
The snow that fell in Bosnia and Herzegovina at this year’s Holocaust remembrance day on 27 January covered traces of another humanitarian crisis happening on European soil. The European Union (EU) is turning back thousands of migrants, mainly from Asia and North Africa, who are stuck at the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.
According to the Bosnian government, around 60 000 migrants have moved through the country since January 2018. The wall built in late 2015 along the Hungarian border has increased migratory flow to Europe through Bosnia and Herzegovina. Currently, there are around 8 000 migrants in limbo in the Balkan country. That figure has not undergone major changes over the past year as Covid-19 restrictions and the increased intransigence of the Croatian police has made travelling more complicated.