Bosnia and Herzegovina
What are the challenges in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered more damage and more loss of life during the conflicts of the early 1990s than any other state of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
More than a decade after the conflict ended, the security situation is much improved but Bosnia is still struggling to overcome the ethnic divisions and political cynicism that continue to frustrate reconciliation and state-building.
What we do
In Bosnia and Herzegovina we focus on community-based policing and arms transfer control initiatives.
Working with our partner organisation Center for Security Studies (CSS), joint work includes:
- researching lessons learned from previous community-based policing initiatives and testing different tools in communities throughout Bosnia
- developing guidelines for police-community partnerships as part of our community-based policing work
- working in four locations on community safety and community-based policing
- 'Safer Community Plans' to tackle security and safety issues developed with residents, police and local authorities
- supporting the Bosnian Government to respond to international arms transfer control initiatives
- promoting more responsible arms transfers in line with EU policy and international best practice
Read a case study on community safety
Read a case study on community-based policing
Read our report, 'Creating safer communities' which includes a chapter on our experience of developing a community safety programme in Sarajevo.
Download 'Creating safer communities'
News and activities
In May we travelled to Sarajevo, Bijeljina, Brčko and Mostar in Bosnia to gather information through workshops, interviews and focus groups about the causes of tensions and conflict in the local communities. This research will be compiled into a conflict analysis to inform Saferworld’s decisions about its future work in Bosnia and ensure conflict sensitivity. Later in the month we presented our draft findings to local NGOs, embassy and donor representatives and received positive comments on both our methodology and findings.
Download Saferworld's full activity report for May - Jun 2008
Find out more
Read more about our work on:
Arms transfer controls in Europe
Security and justice sector development
