Bosnia and Herzegovina: Stability and Peace

Tom Randall Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and the hon. Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) on securing this important debate.

The tone of this debate has been grave, and it has been one of concern. If Bosnians are watching, I hope it will be understood that the motivation is one of love and affection. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a beautiful country of rivers, valleys and mountains, with a vibrant and friendly population. Bosnia could be a great southern European country, if its great potential can be exploited.

In saying that, I do not dismiss the obvious challenges that Bosnia and Herzegovina faces. It has faced the worst atrocities in post-war Europe, and after the civil war it has weak governmental structures, having what has been called a “flat tin roof” of central Government covering two statelets, and there is still a strong international presence in the High Representative. I thank Mr Christian Schmidt for taking the time today to brief parliamentarians on his work. Bosnians should take pride in the fact that for more than two decades there has been peace in that country. As we have heard, no harm has been caused to peacekeepers during that time either.

As a result of those achievements in the past two decades, I share the serious concerns about talk of secessionism; attempts made to weaken central structures even further and to undermine the role of the High Representative; the great deal of political uncertainty; and the weakness of civil society structures. Those concerns build a picture of a lost opportunity to build Bosnia into a strong country. I do not have the experiences that other right hon. and hon. Members have voiced this afternoon, but my small experience came from visiting Ježevac, where there is a refugee camp about 12 miles from Tuzla. It is remote and off the beaten track. I visited in 2000 as a young undergraduate doing some charity work. It is a pretty village of white buildings built by a Norwegian non-governmental organisation, but it is a village of women, girls and boys—an entire generation of men from about 17 onwards is missing there, as they were murdered at Srebrenica. In this remote village were survivors of Srebrenica who were eking out an existence, having been abandoned by the world. In my preparation for this debate, I wanted to know what happened to Ježevac, and I found a report in The Guardian from just last year that showed it was still there. Some 20 years later, the people in Ježevac are in this small remote village outside Tuzla eking out an existence on the hillside in their little huts. That just shows that although great progress has been made, there has been a big lost opportunity to build the country that Bosnia could be. So there is a great deal of work we can do.

I appreciate that only the people of Bosnia can build that strong Bosnian nation, but I add my voice to the calls we have heard this afternoon for Her Majesty’s Government to be that friend of Bosnia that it needs, to support the Dayton structures, including the role of the High Representative, and to take on the malign forces that are seeking to undermine the nation. As we have heard, we have seen twice in the 20th century that Bosnia has been a flashpoint for great violence, and I hope that we can start to take the action that we need today to make sure that Bosnia will not become the headline in the 21st century, as it has been previously.