PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release : 3 July 1998

ICG Publishes Report on Minority Return to Jajce and Travnik Municipalities

The 25-page report, entitled A Tale of Two Cities: Return of Displaced Persons to Jajce and Travnik, is the latest in a series of ICG municipality studies. Earlier studies have included Drvar, Grahovo and Glamoc, Brcko, and the Sarajevo Canton.

Croat-controlled Jajce and Bosniac-controlled Travnik are both municipalities to which displaced persons who do not belong to the ethnic group controlling the territory have been returning. Some 5,000 Bosniacs have returned to Jajce and 2,500 Croats have returned to Travnik since the Dayton Peace Agreement came into force.

The report examines the nature of the minority returns which have taken place to date, the measures that proved successful and those that proved less successful, the official obstructionism which has marred the process, and the obstacles to and possibilities for further returns. It also analyses the politics of return, the policies of the ruling, ethnically-based parties towards displaced persons, and the manner in which the Federation is functioning and evolving in the Middle Bosnia Canton.

The report ends with three pages of recommendations. Among other measures, ICG urges the international community to:

� take effective steps to stop the widespread problem of "double occupancies";

� provide increased support to moderate voices in the Croat and Bosniac communities, through direct assistance as well as by helping them disseminate their views and involving them in discussions on ways to promote returns and reintegration;

� increase efforts to counter the HDZ's propaganda that Travnik is unsafe for minorities;

� oppose the HDZ's plan for the division of Travnik into three Croat and three Bosniac municipalities, as in Mostar.

Moreover, ICG urges donors to increase assistance for housing reconstruction in Jajce, despite the intransigence of its authorities, and to monitor the projects closely to ensure that such assistance benefits returning minorities and Croats willing to move from the town to their homes elsewhere, rather than the HDZ authorities.

Read the report: A Tale of Two Cities: Return of Displaced Persons to Jajce and Travnik

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