Bosnia and Herzegovina is on the Tier 2 Watchlist again. According to the 2019 State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report the BiH government was not sucessful in taking actions to counter the phenomenon. Potential downgrade to Tier 3 status is detrimental to BiH, thus more needs to be done and very soon, othervise the U.S. government will be forced to restrict providing technical assistance, training, or capacity development to all BiH government institutions!
This situation has been discussed by the USAID Mission Director Nancy Eslick and the State Anti-Trafficking Coordinator in BiH, where the State Coordinator briefed on progress in reforming the referral and coordination mechanism in BiH since the recent adoption of the Strategy for combating trafficking in human beings in BiH for the period 2020-2023 and thanked USAID for its assistance in these efforts. The interlocutors concluded that additional joint efforts are needed to assist BiH’s more efficient response to this serious problem.