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Council of Ministers. Photo: BIRN BiH
“The report will be completed after we have received all the feedback. It should be borne in mind that, for instance, the report by the Interior Ministry of Republika Srpska has to be cleared by the government of Republika Srpska,” the Interior Ministry told BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The final deadline for the completion of the report has not been set.
The ministry said the adoption of the report will affect the preparation of the new Strategy for Preventing and Countering Terrorism, while all comments and suggestions collected will be taken into consideration.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only country in the region which has not yet adopted a counter-terrorism strategy in 2021.
After the expiry of last year’s strategy, the Security Ministry sent a decision on the establishment of a working group to draft a new strategy to the Council of Ministers for approval. The Council of Ministers has still not approved the decision, however.
The decision submitted to the Council of Ministers, which BIRN has seen, says the working group shuld beo composed of 32 members, including representatives of ministries and relevant organisations responsible for the prevention part of the strategy.
The previous strategy was mainly drafted by security experts, and some people who spoke to BIRN said they thought it was too security-focused.
When adopting the report on the implementation of the action plan for 2019, the Council of Ministers ordered a final report on the whole period of the strategy’s implementation.
The 2019 report states that some of the important goals of the strategy were not achieved. The criticisms mostly concerned insufficient work on prevention of terrorism, the absence of prevention of radicalisation on the internet and the failure to set aside money in the budget for implementation of the activities specified by the strategy.
This was the only implementation report to have been completed after the adoption of the strategy in 2015. BIRN has seen the report despite the ministry’s refusal to show it to journalists.
BIRN’s analysis of the strategy’s implementation in previous years said that the Bosnian authorities relied on donor resources in the development of prevention programmes, that the action plan was not adopted at all levels of governance and that a clear system for prevention of terrorism was not set up in all local communities.
