20 years in BiH

Celebrating 20 years with some youth from BiH

Earlier this month I traveled to Sarajevo to join with staff, partners, donors and Government representatives in celebrating 20 years of World Vision's work in Bosnia and Hercegovina (BiH). It was a fitting celebration, noteworthy for the large number of youth who were present and who spoke at the ceremony. Since commencing in 1993 during the war, World Vision's emergency relief and development activities in BiH have directly or indirectly impacted more than one third of the country's population, so this is a significant legacy.

After the end of the war, the focus of WV's activities in BiH shifted from reconstruction to long term development.  However in May 2014, BiH experienced catastrophic flooding (the worst to hit the country for over 100 years), and WV once again was engaged in the rapid scale up and implementation of large scale emergency response activities across the country. Issues of chronic flooding in BiH were compounded by another 'hidden' issue, namely that the floods had the disastrous effect of dislodging many of the more than 1 million landmines that remain across the country in uncleared areas. Consequently many areas that had been demined since the war are now at potential risk again.  Tragically there have been several incidents across the country since the flooding, where children or adults have been injured or killed in landmine accidents. 

The aftermath of flooding in May

On the recent visit we were able to visit some of the worst impacted areas from the flooding almost 6 months ago. It was staggering to see just how high the floodwaters rose, and also the extensive damage caused by the flooding. There is now a race against time in many communities across the country to try and repair damaged housing in time for the rapidly approaching winter.

Some of our WV regional team, Jasenko and Hrvoje