Confidence Building Measures Programme

Strasbourg, 19 March 2017 AP/CAT(2018)03 Confidence Building Measures Programme Bosnia and Herzegovina Overview The Council of Europe Confidence Building Measures Programme (CBM) is focused on reconciliation and works to build trust and improve cooperation between people in a variety of post-conflict contexts in Europe. The work is based on safeguarding human rights, the rule of law and strengthening democracy through dialogue. The activities are diverse, technical and not political in nature. The overall objective is to foster reconciliation amongst communities. In Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the CBM programme is working with 19 municipalities from throughout the country which were divided following the Dayton Agreement. The activities carried out in 2017 were designed to respond to practical and shared concerns identified by the municipalities themselves. In northern BiH one activity proposed to the CoE, and supported in 2017/early 2018 was focussed on disaster response. Activity: Inter-municipal Emergency Response Training Target group: 5 Volunteer Brigade Units Participating municipalities: City of Doboj, Doboj East, Doboj South.and Usora municipalities Project background/rationale: Large parts of BiH suffered significant damage due to flooding in recent years, which resulted in the loss of life and serious damage to business and the local environment. In the immediate aftermath of the natural disaster, people from all communities came together to help each other in any way they could, and administrative boundaries between municipalities and entities became irrelevant. The shared experience highlighted the need for neighbouring communities to have the knowledge, skills and resources to respond swiftly in times of need. The group of municipalities recognised the need for voluntary fire brigades on both sides of the entity- boundary to be prepared to cooperate effectively in case of future emergencies. To this end, the municipalities developed a project proposal to jointly train emergency responders from neighbouring municipalities in the Republika Srpska and the Federation, and to carry out disaster response drills. To facilitate the project, the City of Doboj signed Agreements on cooperation with its neighboring municipalities and agreed to host the training as it has a professional Territorial Firebrigade Unit. Including volunteer units, there are a total of 88 volunteer members across all four municipalites required training. The activity, supported by the CoE CBM programme, provided for the first time a joint training exercise between all municipalities which not only reinforced their skills but enhanced the people-to-people, community-to-community contacts necessary to foster reconciliation and to ensure better cooperation in the future. Contacts with the municipalities over the past 18 months has shown that disaster risk reduction, preparedness and response is a high priority for these, and other municipalities in the northern part of BiH including flood protection systems and emergency response. Follow-up The CBM Programme in cooperation with the Major Risks and Environment Division wishes to engage an expert in flood response and disaster risk reduction, to carry out an exploratory visit to the municipalities in question in order to identify local needs in terms of flood prevention and response. This exploratory visit may identify areas where the CoE or others might assist the local authorities further in the future in areas such as further training of the volunteer firefighters, river management and community awareness raising activities. The exploratory visit would ideally be carried out in spring/early summer 2018..

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