Summary action points based on 2012 findings

·         Despite legislative changes, more progress needs to be made in improving services for persons with disabilities including survivors.

·         Discrimination based on the cause of disability persisted and needs to be addressed, as certain categories of civilians with disabilities were not receiving adequate assistance.

·         Ongoing monitoring of the implementation of the victim assistance strategy is required.

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 Protocol V, and has victim assistance obligations under the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Casualties

Casualties Overview

Details and trends

In 2012, the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center (BHMAC) reported 12 mine/ERW casualties in BiH.[1] The 2012 casualty total was significantly less than the 22 mine/ERW casualties recorded in 2011[2] but was similar to the 14 recorded for 2010 and represented a continuing decrease in annual casualties from all other years. All casualties recorded in 2012 were civilians: 10 adult men, one woman and a boy. This marked 2012 as the first year since the end of the conflict that there were no casualties among deminers.

For the period 1992–2012, BHMAC recorded a total of 8,075 mine/ERW casualties: 1,801 killed, 5,822 survivors, and 452 unknown. From 1997 to the end of 2012, BMAC recorded 113 casualties among humanitarian deminers.[3]

Cluster munition casualties

BiH reported having identified 231 cluster munition casualties (43 killed, 188 injured) for the period 1992–2012. Most of these casualties were killed or injured during the war, but it was not reported how many of these casualties occurred during strikes or from unexploded submunitions.[4] At least 86 casualties during cluster munitions strikes were identified in BiH in 1995.[5]

Victim Assistance

There were at least 5,822 mine/ERW survivors in BiH.

Victim assistance since 1999[6]

From 1999–2004, most victim assistance targeting mine/ERW survivors was provided by international NGOs without adequate coordination, often resulting in unsystematic service provision. As post-conflict funding for NGO efforts began to wane after 2004, so did the international support for victim assistance. In 2009, a centralized database on survivors was developed from data provided by national and international NGOs, but the final database was found to be incomplete and inconsistent.

Medical assistance has been adequate since 2004, despite an overall dependence on international aid as a result of the conflict. Improvements have mainly been made in emergency response services, again due to international donor contributions. During the period, the quality of physical rehabilitation services remained variable, but overall satisfactory, despite incomplete rehabilitation teams, a lack of personnel trained to international standards, and a complex bureaucracy.

Government capacity to finance rehabilitation services has improved since 1999. State-run social centers and a network of community-based rehabilitation (CBR) centers created since 1998 provided psychosocial support as well as physical rehabilitation. These continued to endure a lack of capacity and community awareness. NGOs also provided this type of support.

Persistent gaps in economic reintegration remained during the entire period, partly due to high unemployment in general and unemployment of persons with disabilities at around 85%. Almost all of the economic reintegration activities were carried out by NGOs. However, the two entity governments introduced specific funds for persons with disabilities in 2007 and in 2011. Disability legislation existed but was not sufficiently enforced. Services for disabled military persons and pensioners were better than those for civilians.

Victim assistance in 2012

A decrease in all services provided by NGOs continued in 2012, mainly linked with the ongoing decline in international funding; however, there were continued improvements in the quality and availability of state services.

Assessing victim assistance needs

The national database maintained by BHMAC includes a survivor needs assessment compiled in 2009. Data was available for use by victim assistance service providers on request. Some data lacked detailed information on aid received, their age and sex, their needs, as well as their education, occupation, employment, and family members.[7]

Victim assistance coordination[8]

Coordination through the Landmine Victim Assistance (LMVA) Working Group, hosted by BHMAC, primarily consisted of information sharing by victim assistance actors. The main tasks of the LMVA Working Group were to promote the needs of survivors and the coordination, monitoring, and approval of the implementation of those victim assistance projects that received international donor funding. The group was also involved in the approval of statements for international meetings.[9]

The Victim Assistance Sub-Strategy 2009–2019 did not contain measurable or time-bound goals and objectives for monitoring.[10] A 2012 UNDP report noted that “the Landmine Victim Assistance Sub-strategy needs to be reviewed in order to transform it into a more viable and operative tool with clear targets, attainable goals and clearly defined responsibilities if it is to become an effective tool for addressing the needs of these victims.”[11]

Three regular meetings, sponsored by BHMAC of the LMVA Working Group, were held in 2012 the same as in 2011. Another special meeting was held in conjunction with a three-day workshop to revise the Victim Assistance Sub-Strategy 2009–2019. The meeting was funded by the ICRC. Government representatives of the key institutions dealing with these issues related to victim assistance participated in the workshop as well as civil society. The revised strategy remained in draft form as of May 2013.[12]

There is no body with a mission to monitor the implementation of the sub-strategy, and NGOs were not actively monitoring it. BHMAC itself does not have a monitoring mechanism to follow the implementation of the sub-strategy and all information related to implementation of the sub-strategy was obtained from voluntary reporting of NGO activities. BHMAC is not authorized to monitor the government activities in regard to the implementation of relevant legislation. However, other actors in the government sector regularly report on the progress of the implementation of legislation.[13]

BiH submitted a written statement on victim assistance at the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo in September 2012. By 1 July 2013, BiH had not submitted Mine Ban Treaty or Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 7 reporting for calendar year 2012.

Participation and inclusion in victim assistance

Mine/ERW survivors and their representative organizations were included in the LMVA Working Group and survivors were included in the implementation of services through NGOs.[14]

A survivor was included in the delegation of BiH at the intersessional meetings of the Mine Ban Treaty in June 2012 and in the delegation of BiH at the intersessional meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in April 2013.

Service accessibility and effectiveness

Victim assistance activities[15]

Emergency and continuing medical care

According to the European Commission (EC), corruption in public procurement is widespread and is a serious problem; there is also a special risk of corruption in public health services.[16]

In the Republic of Srpska in 2012, state co-payments for medical services for the civilian victims of war were reduced as a result of regulatory changes in the delivery of health services. These changes did not affect children.[17]

Rehabilitation including prosthetics

There were few changes in the quality and quantity of services providing orthopedic and prosthetic devices in 2012. However, in recent years there was an overall increase in the number of service providers, with new or renovated Centers for Rehabilitation and Centers for Mental Health, and an improvement in quality through staff training.[18]

Production of initial prostheses for survivors in the Republic of Srpska is only done in Banja Luka, which creates additional costs for those who have to pay for their own travel expenses because these are not covered by the fund for health insurance. The deadline for obtaining new replacement prosthesis with health insurance was extended from 36 months to 48 months, while for the people over 65 years old the prosthesis is valid for 60 months.[19]

Social and economic inclusion and psychological support

A law entitled Professional Rehabilitation and Employment of Persons with Disabilities in the Federation of BiH, passed in February 2010, allows for a specific fund to support the law’s implementation.[20] Implementation of legislation ensuring the right to employment for persons with disabilities in the Federation of BiH was slow.[21]

Laws and policies

Little progress was made in promoting the rights of persons with disabilities. [22] The Council for Persons with Disabilities includes 10 representatives of persons with disabilities and 10 representatives of state and entity ministries. There are no representatives of mine survivors in the council. NGO’s lobbied for improvement and implementation of the legal framework. Legislation was reportedly relatively well-regulated but is not actually implemented in practice.[23]

In Republika Srpska, the Law on Social Protection entered into force in May 2012. In the Federation, the Law on Payment of Outstanding Benefits was adopted. The Federation of BiH has a strategy for people with disabilities (2010–2014) and Republika Srpska has a strategy for persons with disabilities (2010–2015). However, the implementation of the entities strategies remained weak. No significant steps were undertaken to ensure consistency across the social protection systems of the entities and cantons in BiH.[24]

There remained clear discrimination between different categories of persons with disabilities. 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. Entitlement to rights and benefits for disabled persons is not based on needs but on status. As a result, certain categories of persons with disabilities do not receive adequate financial benefits.[25] BiH’s initial report on the rights of persons with disabilities under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) 2012 notes that “the area of social welfare in Bosnia and Herzegovina is not resolved well, it does not even provide minimum security to citizens and does not define a social minimum for persons with disability either.”[26]

In 2012, amendments were made to the Law on Pension and Disability Insurance of the Republic of Srpska. In it, certain war veterans had their pensions drastically reduced based on their type of disability classification.”[27]

Legislation at all levels prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities. However, in practice there was discrimination against persons with disabilities in all the areas of employment, education, access to health care, transportation, and the provision of other state services.[28] In its initial reporting to the CRPD, BiH reported that “[t]he most important mechanism in protection from discrimination is the Law on Prohibition of Discrimination”[29] However, the EC reported that the anti-discrimination law is in place but does not include disability as a category for discrimination. The law allows for a broad range of exceptions and only limited steps have been taken to ensure its implementation.[30]

Persons with disabilities faced poor recognition of their rights and needs for accessibility. Physical accessibility is still a major problem in BiH and is not included in the priorities for addressing the challenges faced by people with disabilities. There are no action plans to address the removal of physical barriers.[31]

BiH has legislation to ensure physical access to persons with disabilities. In the Federation of BiH, the law mandated that all public buildings must be retrofitted to provide access by mid-2011 and new buildings must also be accessible. In practice, however, buildings were rarely accessible to persons with disabilities, including several government buildings. Republika Srpska had comparable laws for public accessibility, but few older public buildings were accessible.[32]

BiH ratified the CRPD on 12 March 2010.