Action points based on findings

• Improve the quality and sustainability of services for survivors and other persons with disabilities, including by upgrading community-based rehabilitation (CBR) centers.
• Simplify the process of applying for new prosthetic devices, including by allowing for electronic applications.
• Set minimum standards of social welfare payments for persons with disabilities.
• Make greater efforts towards realizing the economic inclusion of mine/ERW survivors and their families.
• Address persistent discrimination based on the category of disability and make adequate assistance available to civilians with disabilities on an equal basis with others.
• Identify sustainable national resources for assistance and international funding opportunities for victims’ representative organizations.

Victim assistance commitments

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is responsible for significant numbers of landmine survivors, cluster munition victims, and survivors of other explosive remnants of war (ERW) who are in need. BiH has made commitments to provide victim assistance through the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) Protocol V, and has victim assistance obligations under the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

BiH ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on 12 March 2010.

Victim Assistance

Since 1992 there were more than 6,000 mine/ERW survivors in BiH. [1]

Victim assistance since 2015

A sharp decrease in the number of victim assistance projects and services provided by NGOs, mainly linked with the ongoing decline in international funding, left service providers with well-established capacity lacking the resources to implement much-needed programs. The largest survivor representative organization (operating since 1997) closed, another indication of the extreme lack of national and international funding where it is most needed for direct assistance to victims. Some other formerly active NGOs were no longer readily contactable.

Victim assistance coordination stalled, and efforts to reestablish a coordination body again resulted in a meeting of key actors under a new title in 2017.[2] Indicative of the sharply decreasing number and reach of projects, there were 20-times fewer recorded beneficiaries of victim assistance in BiH in 2016 compared to 2015.[3]

No specific funding was allocated to victim assistance at the national level, as a result, there was no clear and concrete support for mine victims and their representative organizations.[4]

Assessing victim assistance needs

The BiH Mine Action Center (BHAMC) reported that its casualty database was regularly updated with information on registered mine/ERW incidents, clearance accidents, and assistance projects.[5]

Victim assistance coordination[6]

Since 2014, BiH has reported that until the process of reforming an independent working group appropriate for all action encompassed by assistance for cluster munition victims is completed, BHMAC will be the body temporarily documenting information about the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[7] BHMAC is not authorized to monitor government activities in regard to the implementation of relevant legislation.[8] In 2016, BHMAC adopted the Decision on Forming the Coordination Group for mine/ERW victim assistance.[9] An initial meeting of the multi-stakeholder coordination group was held in April 2017 involving the following bodies and organizations:

• Amputee Organization (Organizacija Amputiraca Republike Srpske, UDAS)
• Red Cross/ Crescent-Federation of BIH; Red Cross-Republika Srpska; Red Cross/Crescent of BiH
• ECO Sport Group
• Hope 87
• Posavina Without Mines
• STOP Mines
• Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB)
• Fund for Professional Rehabilitation and Employment of Disabled People in Republika Srpska
• Vocational Rehab Fund and employment of persons with disabilities in the federation
• Council for Persons with Disabilities of BiH

The coordination group requires approval by the BiH Council of Ministers in order to be formalized.[10] However an informal coordination working group could still provide some effective measures for cooperation and planning between key actors.[11] Previous coordination through the Landmine Victim Assistance (LMVA) Working Group, hosted by BHMAC, had primarily consisted of information sharing by victim assistance actors.[12]

As of 2016, the problem of BiH defining a body responsible for the coordination of victim assistance issues had persisted for more than a decade.[13]

The Victim Assistance Sub-Strategy 2009–2019 was revised in 2012 as the Victim Assistance Sub-Strategy 2014–2019.[14] There is no institution or body with a mandate to monitor the implementation of the sub-strategy. As of March 2017, the mine action strategy was being revised in cooperation with the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD). The revised strategy was reported to include a chapter on victim assistance.[15]

BiH did not make a statement on victim assistance at the Sixth Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster munitions in September 2016 or the Mine Ban Treaty Fifteenth Meeting of States Parties in December 2016. BiH provided information on victim assistance in its Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 7 reporting for calendar year 2016 and in its reporting for the CCW Amended Protocol II.[16] However it did not complete the specific victim assistance form (Form E a) on steps to implement the relevant provisions of Article 8(2) taken by States Parties to the CCW Protocol V that have ERW victims.[17]

Participation and inclusion in victim assistance

Mine/ERW survivors and their representative organizations were included in the newly established “Working Group for Mine Victims Assistance and CCM”[18] and survivors were included in the implementation of services through NGOs. However, support to victims’ representative organizations led by survivors was not sufficient. As a result, the level of participation of survivors in mine action activities remained low.[19]

The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of the Republika Srpska employed a mine survivor as the national coordinator to improving the healthcare of persons with disabilities for the entity. They also worked closely with disabled persons’ organizations within the framework of a cross-sectoral working group coordinated by the ministry. The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare supports(UDAS) activities through a three-year agreement, from 2017 to 2019.[20]

Service accessibility and effectiveness

Victim assistance activities[21]

In 2016 through 2017, UDAS and other local survivors’ organizations continued to provide some of the assistance previously coordinated by the NGO Landmine Survivors Initiatives (LSI). After more than 18 years of continuous operation, LSI closed in May 2016, citing that it was “Unable to carry on with a demanding and comprehensive approach to empowerment of mine victims and other persons with disabilities.” Since starting in 1997 as a branch office of the US-based Landmine Survivors Network (later rebranded Survivor Corps), the operation in BiH had supported more than 3,100 mine survivors and families through income-generation activities, rehabilitation access, and other services including peer support.[22]

Medical care and rehabilitation

As of April 2017, BiH had 63 community centers for mental and physical rehabilitation. The centers continued to provide services to mine/ERW survivors.[23] In addition to these 63 CBR centers, some additional local rehabilitation centers also provide services to mine/ERW survivors, such as making and fitting prostheses.[24] Health insurance covers the costs of basic prosthetic devices, but more needed to be done to address persisting differences in coverage of other rehabilitative costs, based on the origins and category of disability.[25] Mine/ERW survivors are entitled to new prosthetic devices every four years.[26]

The International Trust Fund: Enhancing Human Security (ITF) ran a rehabilitation project for mine/ERW survivors from October 2016 to January 2017 and provided prosthetic devices to 24 landmine survivors.[27]

Hope 87 conducted a nine-month capacity-building project, training more than 170 health professionals in occupational therapy.[28]

While provision of orthopedic and other devices and assistive technology is mandated by law, the extent to which these entitlements can be accessed was severely limited, because the associated regulations were not enforced and services for persons with disabilities are often treated as dispensable in times of economic hardship. Bureaucratic obstacles often prevented survivors from accessing prostheses that they were entitled to. Even in the case that they had medical documentation proving their requirements, applications for new prostheses were frequently rejected. The burdensome process for gathering the required paperwork—considered by many to be excessive especially in the absence of a centralized system—was another significant obstacle to accessing rehabilitation services. Survivors’ organizations, including UDAS, assisted their members in these processes.[29]

Economic and social inclusion

In 2016, BHMAC reported that four victim assistance projects were implemented, which benefitted 44 survivors.[30] This marks a sharp decrease from the 899 survivors who received such assistance in 2015 through eight projects.[31] The four projects were carried out by UDAS and Stop Mines.[32]

In 2016, 40,000 BAM were allocated in support of organizations of persons with disabilities. The same amount will be allocated in 2017.[33]

From 2013 to 2015, ASB provided socio-economic opportunities for mine/ERW survivors through a business and empowerment project funded through the European Union’s Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA).[34]

Laws and policies

BiH ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2010, but NGOs have complained about the lack of effective implementation of laws and programs to help persons with disabilities.[35] NGOs also reported that in the period since BiH ratified the CRPD in 2010, “the state has yet to make concrete steps towards eliminating the discrimination against persons with disabilities.” Such discrimination still exists in both entities of the country, the Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska. Laws concerning the rights of persons with disabilities, including legislation regulating rights to healthcare and rehabilitation, labor and employment, social protection, and education, lack the legal mechanisms necessary for their implementation, which impeded their execution.[36] With regard to victim assistance, BiH reported that disability rights were relatively well regulated by legislation but was not actually implemented in practice.[37]

In 2016, the rights of many persons with disabilitieswere still not effectively protected, making this section of the population very vulnerable. The existing status-based approach to disability continued to result in significant financial inequalities among different categories and detracted from the financial sustainability of social protection.[38]

There was clear discrimination between different categories of persons with disabilities and entitlement to rights and benefits for persons with disabilities is still based on status, instead of on needs. The European Commission (EC) reported that as a result, persons with some categories of disabilities did not receive adequate benefits.[39] In 2016, no steps were taken to change the entitlement system to base it on needs.[40] In particular, persons with disabilities resulting from military service during the 1992–1995 conflict were given a privileged status above civilian war victims and persons who were born with disabilities or acquired impairments by other means.[41] The distinction between war veterans with disabilities, civilian victims of the war, and between those groups and other persons with disabilities was made at all levels and in all areas of BiH social protection structures.[42]

BiH has reported that “Bosnia and Herzegovina with its entities implements standard procedures related to care on persons with disabilities. In these government programs, cluster munitions victims are equal with other disabled people and they receive help that is regulated by legal acts of governmental institutions for this field. Discrimination in this matter does not exist.”[43]

Although legislation at all levels prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities, in practice there was discrimination against persons with disabilities in all the areas of employment, education, access to healthcare, transportation, and the provision of other state services.[44]

Discrimination on the basis of disability was explicitly forbidden by the previous labor and employment laws in both entities, but new laws passed in 2015 no longer contain such provisions.[45]

In August 2016, amendments to the law on prohibition of discrimination were adopted to include disability (and age, sexual orientation, and gender identity) as grounds for discrimination.[46] Nevertheless, discrimination based on disability continued. The EC previously stated that persons with disabilities “are not adequately protected,” by anti-discrimination regulations at state, entity, or cantonal levels, or in the Brčko District.[47]

There is generally poor awareness of the necessity of applying accessibility standards throughout the whole system of designing, building, and supervising construction resulting in inaccessible buildings, with only partial access to some of the facilities. There were physical obstacles to access most institutions of primary healthcare in both urban and rural environments.[48] Architectural barriers remain a major problem in exercising any rights of persons with disabilities.[49]

BiH has legislation to ensure physical access to persons with disabilities, but it was rarely enforced. Human rights NGOs continued to report that many new public buildings continued to be built without being made accessible for persons with disabilities.[50]

In December 2016, the Federation of BiH adopted a strategy for persons with disabilities for the period 2016–2021,[51] while in April 2017 the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska adopted a 2017–2026 strategy to improve the social position of persons with disabilities.[52] At the national level, the national strategy for the inclusion of persons with disabilities 2016–2020 was before the National Assembly as of March 2017.[53] The legislative framework on social protection needs better implementation in both the Federation and Republika Srpska.[54]