UNDP | Europe & CIS | Bosnia and Herzegovina Targets Surplus Ammunition

Bosnia and Herzegovina Targets Surplus Ammunition

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Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, February 2009-Authorities destroyed surplus rocket propellant in Vitezit this month, as part of an ongoing effort to rid Bosnia and Herzegovina of increasingly hazardous ammunition. The country has a roughly 25,000 tons of surplus ammunition, a legacy of its conflicts in the 1990s. Dismantling all the explosives is one the country’s biggest security priorities.

So far the programme has destroyed 3,600 tons of ammunition since 2005, with the support of the European Commission, the United Nations Development Programme and other donors. The programme, known as the Small Arms Control Project, has also destroyed roughly 95,000 small and light weapons.

“Ammunition depot explosions continue to kill and injure many hundreds of people each year,” UNDP Resident Representative, Christine McNab, said. “The frequency of undesirable explosions of ammunition depots has been increasing over the last five years.”

In Vitezit, the destroyed rocket propellant marked the beginning of an initiative to destroy 42 tons of ammunition at a factory there. Other sites involved in the Small Arms Control Project include Pretis, Vogošća, Vitez, Binas, Bugojino and Doboj.

The need for such destruction is especially acute as surplus stockpiles deteriorate over time, making them less safe. At the same time, Bosnia and Herzegoina have increasingly fewer qualified personnel to address the issue. In recent years, the country’s armed forces have been downsized from 60,000 to 10,000. Additionally, only a handful of states have been able to manage the increasingly hazardous stockpiles on their own. Some 19 percent of Bosnians and Herzegovinans are estimated to own small and light weapons, although the initiative reduced small and light weapons incidents by 25 percent in 2008.

Even so there is much more work to be done.

“This trend of undesirable explosions can only continue as the surplus stockpiles from previous conflicts continue to deteriorate,” McNab said.

In addition to the EC, which contributed 2.7 million Euros to the Vitezit demolition, and the UNDP, other supporters of the project include the Ministry of Defence, local municipal authorities and the government of Sweden.