Housing Policy Interviews. Public administation. Sarajevo, 28.11.2011.
Can you start with your work? You said that within your sector you have several departments which deal with various issues regarding refugees and displaced persons?
I am not sure that I will be able to answer you right away. The issue is very, very broad… I will try… I have been here for 18 years… the war was still ongoing, when I got discharged from the army I began to work there, while the war was still ongoing. So if I get into something that does not interest you please tell me. An interesting thing about working on this issue in BiH is that very quickly you will become aware of the fragmentation of jurisdictions with regards to the issue, and you will see which issues they are. I am a lawyer, so I will stick more to the law rather than politics. The jurisdiction of the national government is very limited. You will see in the BiH constitution that the state government’s exclusive jurisdictions are very limited. Practically, BiH is moving towards creating a policy in the domain of refugees and displaced persons… We do not have any jurisdiction over most issues which regard reintegration of returnees to BiH. This, of course, leaves serious consequences in the field. So… just earlier, I had a meeting with international institution representatives, OHR, UNHCR, and OSCE, which is an excellent example of this division of jurisdiction. People in BiH today, lose their property, returnees lose their property because the people who temporarily lived on their property before them, seek compensation for what they have invested in the property, and that is a scholar example. The only link we found and we use to deal with this issue in one segment, is social housing as a shape of solving Annex 7 of the Dayton Peace Agreement. So, the only link is social housing as a form of exit strategy for Annex 7. That is a very specific area where we do not have jurisdiction over housing policy, but we do take care of certain social resolutions for refugees and displaced persons. That is the link between those two issues. You asked how is the Ministry involved. So, we establish umbrella regulations in the field of refugees, while the entities, cantons and municipalities establish lower implementing legislation. Also, on the level of BiH we have problems with implementing regulation, because the vertical subordination does not exist. The role of the national government is not that strong. The entities are very strong, especially the RS. They defy the strong state. We are speaking about the law not politics, even though they are connected. We, in BiH, have worked many years on the reconstruction of property of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina. BiH had 1.1 million residential units before the war, while it had 4.3 million residents. One who deals with these issues knows that this is a very high standard. Unfortunately during the war 445,000 residential units were destroyed, and until today we have rebuild 333,000. So, there are some 120,000 still in ruin. So, on one side we have had huge success, while on the other side it is a problem to have such a large number not rebuild. We also had 225,000 temporarily occupied residential units, and until today we have returned 99.9%. We have returned practically everything; the 0.1% is court cases in process, some of which are very disputable.
On TV you mentioned, if I remember, the financing of this entire restitution process… that in the past few years these issues regarding financing were still not resolved, that the money was not coming in, that this was not a priority of the international community anymore, and that the national government did not allocate money for that purpose anymore?
Yes.
You mentioned some strategies?
Yes. I will speak about that, but before that I would just like to complete my point in regards with what we had and what is happening now. When we speak about property restitution and residential rights, it is very important that we are in collaboration with institutions from the international community. The international community had a big role in BiH. We took over jurisdiction for Annex 7 in 2003. The international community, of course, made some good and bad moves. The good thing is that many residential units were rebuilt and that we restituted the property to its owners, but the bad thing is that it was not consistent and it lacked principles in implementing certain constitutional resolutions. The international community made a big mistake, which had consequences for BiH, in the domain of property restitution and residential rights, and the work of the CRPC, the Commission for Property Claims for Refugees and Displaced Persons, Annex… it is a long story, a big legal issue, of course, I cannot explain it in a couple of minutes, but in short… Annex 7 foresees the property to be restituted by means of such a commission, the same commission which will resolve the issue of compensation for irreversible property damage. Unfortunately, that commission restituted the people’s property only in a formal sense.
Only on paper?
Yes. It should have developed mechanisms, to resolve the issue of compensation through restitution. Unfortunately, the commission only formally dealt with restitution, while neglecting compensation. This is a big problem today. It is now an expansive and complicated issue, and the country will have to face this problem. A big task is still ahead of us, we have to rebuild more than 100,000 residential units, close to 400 residential buildings, infrastructure, piping and social care, while other issues arose which were not much spoken about until now. Before all, this was the issue of local integration for the ones who do not wish to go back home, and compensation for property that cannot be restituted in that context. This was all very expensive for the needs of the restitution process, we also need the infrastructural sustainability… we still need close to a billion KM.
Excuse me, are those refugees? Because we spoke to some refugees and returnees from East Bosnia, Rogatica and Bratunac, who have property there but do not wish to go back?
That is the local integration program; I am speaking about restitution and re-integration.
They claim that they cannot return there because they have no work waiting on them, and they cannot take their children to school there?
That is partially correct, but we will speak about it later. So, all of these processes are really expensive. We still have about 2,700 families in collective centers; we have 2,000 families with no electricity, and other basic utilities. Now we are facing a wall. We are facing the question of how to finance. For the most drastic areas we are going to take out a loan, to solve the collective housing issue. We already took one out from the Council of Europe Development Bank, and now we are taking out a new one from CEB. Also, we are taking money from projects of the OPEC Development Fund and the Saudi Development Fund. These are all funds only to solve the most essential issues which I spoke about earlier. The donors have all left this region. For the past 3 years we have been investing 90% of our own funds, while the 10% was invested by the international community. Of course, we are not satisfied with that, and we seek of the international community to complete the job and its duties in BiH. They, of course, justify this with the fact that numerous other hot spots and needs exist in the world, and that they have already invested a lot here. Crime is often brought up in this segment, in investments, and so on. We claim that they can address this issue only to themselves.
I do not know what exactly do you mean?
I will explain it to you. Since 2003, when we took over this area, we know and are responsible for where every cent went. We do not have the opportunity to hide anything. You receive a budget, distribute it by areas, by regions, the money gets spent, and later a report is generated. The chaos in this area occurred between 1996 and 2003. That is the period when the international community headed renovation and implementation. You cannot find data about that period in one place. Some things were done by the European Commission, some by the US Government, some by Arab countries, some by bilateral donors, and who knows who else. This is really important to know, because often the responsibility for those things gets attributed to the BiH government. For example, if we look at any of the years since we took over, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, any year, we can find all the information; what municipality, which project, how much money… I would like to see this data for the period when the international community was in charge. There is no chance to obtain that. Since I took over in 2003, I have invested much effort, and I have this documented, into obtaining data, not about how much money was invested, but about who benefited from what, so we would not have double beneficiaries. We obtained some limited and very useless data. So that you know, we are aware that we were the users of large amounts of aid in a certain period, but we also were a perfect place for various machinations in this field. Nonetheless we appreciate the role of the international community and we are thankful, but what is obvious and characteristic for this field is the huge amount of funds which goes towards administration of this process. Administration costs for the projects amounted up to 50% and even more, while in the projects we do today that amounts to five-six times less. But that is all history now, the war the post war period and so on. There are plenty of people who deal with that. Today we are faced with the following problem: how to bring problems to an end, how to bring projects to a conclusion. I spoke very little about data today, about project…
You don’t say! You have everything memorized?
I do, but I was saving yours and my time both. You have everything written here. This is that document; “Revised Strategy”… this copy is in English. I wrote it 2 years ago with a group of authors. This is the sublimation of everything the international community and local governments think about this issue. We all participated in the making of this document. It is also available on our website, but here is a hard copy as well. So I would rather allow you to ask your questions, while you can read this later, everything is written there.
I have a common probably naïve, question. If 99.9% of occupied homes were restituted to their rightful owners, what happened to the people who were living there? It must have been a complicated process. They probably had other homes to which they could have gone, but maybe they did not want to. We talked about this, but what happened to the people who lost property in that restitution process?
That process unfolded in several directions. First, the basic idea of that process was to return the property to its earlier state. So, we have to acknowledge the fact that amongst those 220,000 people most were refugees and displaced persons. They were served resolutions stating that they had to vacate someone else’s property. That process did not unfold so smoothly, it lasted about five or six years. So, we first had to create a consciousness amongst people that they had to leave someone else’s property. We had to be very harsh, and some people even ended up on the street. The government at that time could not deal with the issue of where would everybody go, because of numerous political, legal and administrative manipulations. The point is that they had to vacate property that is not theirs, and that was going in a very good direction. Some got temporary housing, the ones who were legally entitled to it, while others had to find for themselves. One part of those people returned to their houses, some people tried to resist these resolutions, but the process was in motion, and that resistance was broken. So today we have a situation in which people have left someone else’s property and either went back to theirs or found other solutions.
I am interested in the issue of the people who have gotten funds to return to their homes? I am from Kakanj and there is a neighborhood there were people who have gotten those funds were supposed to build houses. However, that neighborhood is empty. Has your ministry followed those cases, and were those people obligated to return to those neighborhoods if their homes were build? We have spoken to a professor about the processes of planned migration which took place after the war, where certain nationalities, so to say, left certain cities for others. Voluntary ethnical cleansing took place and those houses were abandoned. Have you followed any such processes?
Yes. We certainly followed the migration processes; that is written in this document as well. However, we were very limited by the resolutions of the high representative. They thought, with regards to the implementation of the regulations, that we should not limit the people’s choice and freedom of movement, that we as a country are responsible to restitute their property, and that it is their right to choose whether they want to return to that property or not. This is a stipulation of Annex 7 which states: “The people have the right to return, the right to reposes their property, and the right to compensation for property which cannot be returned.” Today, we have a stipulation in our law which states that general criteria for someone to be awarded reconstruction of their property is that they have to be a returnee, that they have to return to their house, but the people here consciously manipulate this. They all say that they want to return, but in practice some do not return. They all say: “We will return.” But when the house is rebuilt they do not go back.