UK in Bosnia and Herzegovina

A joint blog with the US Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina Maureen Cormack  It has been a frustrating couple of days.  For a moment, it seemed as though the months of discussions on the Coordination Mechanism had finally come to an end, and that BiH would be able to start making the key decisions necessary […]

The date is set. On 23 June, the British public will vote on whether the UK should remain in the EU, or whether we should leave. The British Government is not neutral in this debate. Having secured an agreement to a special status for the UK, the Government has said clearly that it believes that the UK will […]

A lot of people ask me why there aren’t more British businesses investing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They’re usually surprised to hear that, in fact, there are already quite a lot. Our British Business Club has over 120 corporate members, big and small. I would love to see more British companies trading here. But the […]

Wherever I go in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I try to seek out ordinary citizens, particularly young people, and to talk to them about the new EU strategy, and the Reform Agenda that has come from it. From all these conversations, one thing is very clear: most people really don’t understand what the Reform Agenda is […]

I was recently asked to speak at an event about the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was the only speaker. I was happy to be there, but to be honest I thought it was a bit odd. I’m a foreign diplomat who has lived here for a year. Why should I be better qualified […]

During my first year here, I have been struck by just how much political energy in the RS is spent on worrying about imagined threats to its continued existence. Political speeches have little to say about the really serious problems facing ordinary people in Republika Srpska, and across BiH, with a struggling economy, high unemployment and […]

In the last few days, a lot of people have been expressing strong views about the planned UN resolution to mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica during the terrible war of the 1990s, where all sides suffered such terrible losses, military and civilian. When the UK accepted the responsibility of drafting this […]

Like many things here in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the history of efforts to reform the justice sector is long and complicated. There have been important successes; there have been painful failures. There are many superb and honest judges and prosecutors in BiH, but there are also those who have betrayed the authority and trust that […]