Bosnia and Herzegovina

Mission Without Borders started up in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 as the brutal war ended.
Coffee is an important ritual in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where coffee shops date back to the 16th century. Cooked in a small copper-plated pot with a long neck called a džezva, Bosnian coffee is served on a round iron tray with a ceramic cup and sugar cubes – and enjoyed over long conversations with friends or family.
Mission Without Borders

Thanks to our generous sponsors, we have been working in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995. Currently we are supporting 224 families in five communities, helping them to develop their potential and find ways to provide for themselves.   

The aftermath of war

Mission Without Borders started up in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 as the brutal war ended. Trauma and malnutrition were widespread, with hundreds of thousands of people in dire need and two million people displaced.

More than 100,000 people were killed in the war, and more than 20,000 went missing, believed to be dead. 
Mission Without Borders

Decades later, the remains of more than 7,000 victims have yet to be found, the search hampered by too few investigators at the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute.  

In Srebrenica, 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males were executed – the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust. Thousands of people were interned in concentration camps such as Omarska, where they endured torture and terrible conditions.   

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

The war began in 1992, not long after Yugoslavia had been dissolved. The creation of an independent Bosnian nation that would have a Bosniak majority was opposed by Bosnian Serbs. They launched a military campaign, beginning a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing. Later, conflict also broke out in central Bosnia between Croats and Bosniaks, while in other regions they remained allies.

As a result of the war, it is estimated that 1.7 million people in Bosnia and Herzegovina currently suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Mission Without Borders

Subsequent generations are also affected by what is called transgenerational trauma, where parents’ stress responses have an impact on their children’s development.  

Meeting families’ needs in war-torn Mostar 

Mission Without Borders’s first project in Bosnia and Herzegovina was our family sponsorship programme in Mostar, where to this day, many houses and buildings are scarred by shrapnel and bullet holes.

Families enrolled on Mission Without Borders’s family sponsorship programme received regular food and hygiene items, as well as emotional and spiritual support. When the war ended, children were underfed, exhausted, and traumatised, and parents were in survival mode. Spiritually, the greatest need was to forgive, reconcile, and find hope. Our regular support was – and continues to be – crucial in helping families recover and have hope for the future.  

Later, Mission Without Borders’s work expanded to other places including Sarajevo, Bugojno, Tuzla and Glamoc. 

Ethnic division and ‘others’  

The Dayton Accords, the peace agreement created in 1995 that brought an end to the war, divided power among the three main ethnic groups, Bosniak, Serb and Croat, who largely correspond to the three main religions, Islam, Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism respectively. 

However, it had the unintended impact of entrenching the country as an ethnically divided state. Fear and grievances between groups continue to be exploited by politicians and often reinforced by the media and by separate school curricula. 

Those minority groups who do not fit the categories of Bosniak, Serb and Croat, an estimated 12% of the population, are labelled “Others” under the constitution – and have no real access to political power. This includes Roma people, who are also marginalised in other ways, with Roma children five times more likely to live in poverty than their non-Roma peers.  

Discover how at our Soup Kitchen in Glamoc, people from different ethnic groups enjoy a strong sense of community.

Poverty and unemployment

Bosnia and Herzegovina faced many challenges in the post war period, and the consequences are still being felt today. Economic growth, reform and investment have been hindered by lingering ethnic divisions, along with widespread corruption, nepotism and organised crime.   

One-third of all children in Bosnia and Herzegovina are experiencing poverty and subsequent hunger and malnutrition.
UNICEF

Unemployment is over 27% and only about half of working age people are economically active. An average of 50,000 people – mostly skilled workers and professionals – leave Bosnia and Herzegovina every year. 

The families that Mission Without Borders support are battling to survive on low wages or struggling to find work. We also support elderly people living in poverty and have started up an after school club for Roma children. Sharing the message of hope, forgiveness and God’s love can be challenging in a country where people have experienced so much betrayal and animosity. Our local staff and volunteers faithfully serve God and demonstrate his love in tangible ways.