Bosnia: Icy struggle for many migrants stuck in freezing tents

On 1 January Bosnian soldiers erected basic tents for the migrants at Lipa

Thousands of refugees and migrants urgently need proper shelter in Bosnia-Herzegovina after weeks outdoors in freezing cold, the UN has warned.

Some 2,500 people are in unheated tents or sleeping rough near the northern town of Bihac. A UN official says some are now being moved to heated tents.

Local authorities have refused to reopen a nearby reception centre.

Instead hundreds have been forced to return to a temporary camp that was ravaged by fire last month.

Peter Van der Auweraert of the UN's International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has tweeted photos of the basic tents erected at the Lipa camp by the Bosnian army a few days ago.

But his latest post is upbeat. Lipa is carpeted with heavy snow, he says, so the relocation of migrants to heated tents, now under way, is an "important step forward". The new tents were brought in by the army.

The camp was set up hastily in the summer when the coronavirus pandemic forced crisis measures including border closures.

But aid agencies pulled out of the camp in December, saying it was unsustainable without water and electricity.

Some residents forced to leave the facility looted equipment and set fire to tents, police said.

However, about 900 migrants had to go back there, after local officials refused to let them move to the empty reception centre in Bihac. Another 1,500 are struggling in primitive conditions elsewhere near the town.

The migrants are from South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and got stuck in Bosnia while trying to reach Croatia, an EU member state seen as a gateway to the EU.

This week the Red Cross provided some hot food for the Lipa migrants

Some of the migrants have refused to use the tents in Lipa because they lack heating and sanitation. Some also went on hunger strike, angry at the lack of amenities.

But on Tuesday many did receive Red Cross food parcels.

"We want people in proper reception centres where they have access to services, like the 6,000 other people in Bosnia," Mr Van der Auweraert, the IOM's head in Bosnia-Herzegovina, told the BBC's Balkans correspondent Guy De Launey at Lipa.

The IOM says about 8,500 non-EU migrants are living in Bosnia, still hoping to get to northern Europe.

"Here is too much cold. You know, the weather is rainy and the weather is very cold, and we can't sleep in here," one migrant told our correspondent.

In recent years thousands of people, including refugees from the conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria, have entered Bosnia hoping to get asylum in the EU.

Bosnia's central government ordered the reopening of a reception centre in an old factory on the outskirts of Bihac, but the local authorities refused.

The city's mayor, Suhret Fazlic, told the BBC: "We are not satisfied with approach of EU - people coming from Greece and Bulgaria want to get to Croatia, but stuck in Bihac."

The EU has told the Bosnian authorities that they "must assume their responsibilities". The country of 3.5m has ambitions to join the EU.

On Wednesday the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the EU had funded the still empty shelter in Bihac, but Bosnian officials had "ignored repeated appeals to provide basic and secure living conditions and humane treatment".

His spokesman Peter Stano said "over the last two years, we provided over 90m euros (£81m; $110m) for centres, equipment, medical and social care.

"We need them to move - not play political games with people's lives," he complained.

More on the migrant crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina:

• The man offering heat to people rejected by Europe

• 'Inhumane' conditions put Bosnia migrants at risk