Bosnia and Herzegovina saw 10.000 fewer people on the move in 2024 – what changed
According to the IOM Situation Report for the week 20-26 January 2025, the number of people on the move who arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina decreased significantly in 2024, dropping from 34.500 arrivals in 2023 to 25.200 in 2024. This decline, particularly noticeable from August, raises questions about the underlying causes of this trend.
What happened?
A combination of factors across multiple levels shaped migration dynamics during the year and are expected to continue impacting trends in 2025 too.
These factors can be categorized into three key areas: the EU’s actions, developments within the Western Balkan region, and measures taken inside Bosnia and Herzegovina itself.
1. The EU’s role
As we might expect, the EU has played a central role in the Western Balkans’ response to migration. In 2024, it intensified funding and cooperation with local governments in the region.
To begin with, it launched several projects aimed at improving border and migration management in Bosnia and Herzegovina, providing targeted funding with the goal of “effectively implementing migration policies in accordance with EU standards”. But we know what this means: it is part of the EU’s broader strategy to externalize its borders and strengthen Fortress Europe.
These fundings are part of the Instrument of Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA), the EU's primary tool for supporting EU-aligned reforms in countries aspiring to join the Union. Such policies clearly involve inhumane and degrading treatment towards people attempting to cross the EU’s borders, with little regard for their humanity.
Notable funding highlights directed to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2024 included:
- February: €6.4 million was allocated to enhance the capacity of BiH’s border police, providing specialized equipment, operational support, and training for government officials and border police cadets.
- November: IT equipment worth €173.000, including specialized telecommunications sets, computers, laptops, software licences, was donated to “support the security institutions of BiH” and control its borders.
- December: an additional surveillance and border infrastructure equipment worth €1.1 million, including travel document readers, document verification devices, specialized tools for detecting concealed persons and controlled substances, was provided.
Additionally, the EU boosted Serbia's border technology in July, including drones and surveillance systems with cameras, thus further tightening regional border control.
The EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum officially adopted by the European Parliament in April, and formally approved by the Council of the EU in May 2024, introduces stricter measures and enhances cooperation with third countries and Frontex, with regards to EU border crossings and returns. Consequently, it will have a significant impact on the Western Balkans’ management of their borders.
New border procedures provide for systematic screenings of people arriving at the EU’s external borders and fast-tracked border asylum and return procedures for those who are unlikely to be granted protection; asylum seekers will have to apply for international protection in the country of first entry and remain there until the country responsible for their asylum application is determined.
This means that if Western Balkans countries will be tasked with detaining people during asylum processes or returns procedures, while also receiving increased numbers of people returned from the EU, there is a risk of prolonged detention in overcrowded and under-resourced facilities. Human rights concerns, such as lack of access to legal representation and comprehensive asylum procedures, healthcare, and dignified living conditions, are likely to worsen, as will the mental health strain on people being detained there.
In June, the EU and Serbia signed an agreement expanding Frontex's operations across the entire territory of Serbia. This means Frontex officers are now active not only along the EU's external borders with Hungary, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria, but also on Serbia's borders with Bosnia, North Macedonia, and Montenegro.
2. Developments within the Western Balkan region
At the end of January last year, a police operation was carried out by Serbian police in Mali Zvornik, a town at the Serbian-Bosnian border, to “suppress irregular migration”. The week after, there were no signs of people on the move at known informal living sites, and the asylum centre in the region, Banja Koviljaca AC, was found empty.
As we saw in the aftermath of the well-known Special Police Operation in January 2023, it typically takes a significant amount of time before people return to areas where such operations occurred. In fact, only in August 2024 did we begin to see significant numbers of people begin to cross the Hungarian border from northern Serbia again.
Both events inevitably impacted the number of people entering Bosnia and Herzegovina: the police operation made entry into BiH more challenging, and many chose to reattempt direct entry into the EU through Hungary, as evidenced by pushback testimonies collected by Collective Aid in Northern Serbia during the summer, rather than undertaking the longer journey through Bosnia.
In March 2024, Slovenia and Croatia launched a new task force, ZeBRA, to strengthen cooperation on anti-smuggling efforts. Coordinated by Europol, with Bosnia as a partner country, the operation has seen the criminalisation of many people on the move as smugglers. During the summer, Croatian authorities increasingly criminalized movement, with individuals from transit groups being accused of smuggling for arbitrary reasons; arguably, the wider pretext being the widespread deterrence of so-called ‘irregular’ migration and the punishment of those who have no choice but to utilise these methods.
In general, regional cooperation and joint action to “strengthen security and stability” in the region, between Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia, as well as with other countries like Slovakia and Hungary, were reinforced and emphasized as crucial for effectively reducing the number of people on the move within the countries’ borders.
3. Measures taken inside Bosnia
Even though people living in the temporary reception camps in the outskirts of Sarajevo, who experienced plenty of inhumane treatments along their way, keep referring to Bosnia as the “most welcoming” country of their route, the situation has been worsening in the last year.
In September last year, the Head of BiH’s Service for Foreigners’ Affairs, Zarko Laketa, publicly stated that people on the move were “a threat to security”, and in October, as we reported in that month’s BVMN update, there was an increase of Bosnian pushbacks into Serbia, which also resulted in people drowning in the Drina river while trying to cross it to reach Bosnia.
In May, a new State Commission for the Border in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in charge of integrated border management, was established. It paved the way for the Frontex Status Agreement, initialled in December, which allows Frontex to deploy its officers in the Bosnian territory too, and thus militarize and fortify its borders, as it has consistently done in the last 20 years. International cooperation with the EU and Frontex is a key EU accession requirement, and will make Bosnia complicit in the inhumane and degrading treatment reserved to people trying to cross Europe’s borders.
In addition, we heard reports of an increasing number of people avoiding temporary reception centres and choosing private housing or hostels instead, in order not to be captured by registration processes, which leaves them out of official statistics on migration.
The bigger picture: fewer people, worse conditions?
The combination of all these events likely reduced the flow of people on the move through Bosnia and neighbouring countries. But while numbers have dropped, this does not mean that the situation has improved, as various state and non-state actors would have us believe for the convenience of their particular narratives and agendas. People are being subjected to violent pushbacks, criminalized for the simple act of movement, and often forced to return to even more dangerous conditions than the ones they had left behind. Within this unwelcoming framework, people have become increasingly disillusioned about their chances of entering the EU for the purposes of making an asylum claim, as is their right.
Analyzing the migration policies adopted by both the EU and individual states in recent decades, it is clear that all governments, regardless of their political orientation, are viewing migration and its causal factors through an ever-narrowing lens of what can be considered to be ‘humanitarian’ and therefore ‘legitimate’, rather than an individual human right. Instead, they adopt a security-focused and exclusionary perspective, viewing people crossing borders as - first and foremost - a threat to national and societal security. This approach has led to the stigmatization and systematic mistreatment of those seeking asylum - individuals fleeing persecution and conflict - who are often subjected to inhumane, detention-like conditions while awaiting international protection. At the same time, economic migrants, who move to improve their quality of life and could help fill crucial labour shortages caused by demographic decline, as well as provide significant remittances vital to their country of origin’s economy, are denied legal pathways to employment in Europe. As a result, many are forced into irregularity.
In addition, it must be recognized that rigid distinctions between "humanitarian" and "economic" drivers are increasingly inadequate, as reasons for migration are often multifaceted and deeply interconnected; many individuals face a combination of factors that push them to leave their home countries. For example, while people in Syria may no longer be subject to direct persecution by Assad's regime or ISIS, decades of instability, a struggling economy, and unlivable wages still make it an incredibly difficult place to live. At the same time, climate change causing environmental instability is further blurring these definitions, as this phenomenon is often shaped by interactions with socio-economic, cultural and political factors. Even without conflicts or persecution, worsening environmental and, as a consequence, economic conditions leave many with no means of survival: How can a person continue to sustain their livelihood when their land is no longer fertile and farming is no longer a viable option? The traditional dichotomy between humanitarian and economic migration fails to capture these realities, reinforcing policies that ignore said complexities.
In a context where people compelled to irregularly cross borders due to lack of legal pathways are equated to “security threats” and “invaders”, it is clear that policymakers will celebrate fewer arrivals, as it would mean that their segregation and externalization policies have been effective, and their countries are “safe”. However, this is not a sign of success. It is a sign of a broken system, a system that continues to make options for moving, that many of us in Europe take for granted, unavailable to certain third-country nationals, while adopting measures in the name of “security”. But none of these policies actually deal with the security and safety of people on the move, who are never taken into account as people but rather as mere threats.
It is a dog biting its tail. We need a change of narrative. Now.
Words by Elisa Andreolli