V. Inside Lukavica Detention Center: Th wider system of deportations and “voluntary” return underlying immigration detention in Bosnia

This blog is the final piece in our series accompanying the release of our report on Lukavica, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s only official immigration detention centre. So far, we have looked at the laws that make detention possible, the facility itself, and what legal access and child detention look like in practice. Here, we zoom out one last time: to the wider system of deportations and “voluntary” returns, and the role Lukavica plays in Bosnia’s emerging infrastructure of return, an infrastructure strongly shaped by the European Union and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Lukavica as a node in a larger return machine

Lukavica is often described as just an “immigration centre” where people are held until their status is resolved. Our research shows that it is also a key node in a much wider return machinery, connecting border policing, readmission agreements, prison transfers, forced deportations and IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) schemes.

People reach Lukavica through multiple pathways: direct apprehensions at the border without valid documents; transfers from reception centres like Blazuj and Lipa after police raids; and transfers from ordinary prisons once a criminal sentence ends. In all these scenarios, Lukavica functions as a holding space between one system and the next, between camp and deportation, between prison and removal, between being pushed back and being pushed “home”.

This role is not accidental. The Law on Aliens allows the detention of people readmitted to BiH under international agreements when their stay elsewhere is deemed “illegal”, and of those with expulsion orders seen as likely to “escape or otherwise prevent” their removal. Combined with the 2025 Border Control Law, which frames irregular migration explicitly as a security issue, this creates a legal basis for a detention–deportation cycle that can last months or years.

Readmission and forced returns: who gets sent where

Bosnia has signed a series of readmission agreements and cooperation frameworks that make it easier to remove people to so‑called “countries of origin” or “third countries”. The BiH–Croatia agreement, for example, allows Croatia to send people back to Bosnia if their stay there was considered irregular, and those people can then be detained in Lukavica with a view to onward deportation.

Thanks to FOI documents obtained from the European Commission, we know that Bosnia has become something of a regional “success story” for forced returns in the eyes of EU officials. One Commission document notes that “forced return operations to countries of origin remain limited, with the notable exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which effectively conducts such operations to Türkiye, Pakistan, Morocco, Bangladesh and other third countries, facilitated by strong diplomatic relations.”

In practice, this means that people detained in Lukavica are often not simply waiting for a decision on their asylum claim; they are being prepared for removal to places they may have left due to persecution, violence or deep economic hardship. For some nationalities,  like Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, the combination of readmission agreements, EU pressure and IOM involvement creates a particularly strong pull towards return, whether forced or labelled “voluntary”

IOM’s dual role: manager and “helper”

IOM presents itself globally as a neutral, humanitarian‑minded partner helping states “manage migration” and assisting migrants who want to go home. In BiH, as our report shows, IOM’s role in the return ecosystem is anything but neutral.

On one side, IOM manages or has managed most of the temporary reception centres (TRCs) in the country, and has invested heavily in security infrastructure using EU funds. Between 2018 and 2021 alone, IOM spent more than one million euros on private security contracts across TRCs, while also quietly financing expansion works in Lukavica, including new floors and internal systems. Private security companies with documented histories of disproportionate violence have been contracted, and at least one death in an IOM‑run TRC has been linked to abuse by guards.

As of March 2026, IOM is still issuing procurement calls for construction and upgrade works at Lukavica, making it de facto responsible for managing finances and contracts for the expansion of immigration detention infrastructure in BiH.

On the other side, IOM runs Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) programmes, which include securing travel documents, covering travel costs, and offering limited financial support for people to return to their countries of origin. Officially, IOM has claimed that AVRR is not offered inside immigration detention centres like Lukavica. However, investigations in other countries and testimonies from people detained in Bosnia paint a different picture: AVRR is often actively promoted inside detention as the “only realistic option” to avoid long‑term detention or forced return.

Detainees and stakeholders we spoke to reported that IOM staff advertise AVRR extensively in Lukavica, particularly to those whose legal avenues are blocked or who have already been rejected for asylum. In such circumstances, the line between “voluntary” and “coerced” becomes extremely thin. When the alternatives are indefinite detention, deportation in handcuffs, or “choosing” to leave with a small cash sum, the power imbalance is obvious.

“Voluntary returns” that don’t feel voluntary

AVRR is often described as a humane alternative to forced deportations. Our findings suggest that, at least in the context of Lukavica, AVRR can operate more like a “soft” deportation tool than a genuinely free choice.

People in detention face constant uncertainty: they rarely know how long they will be held, how strong their case is, or whether their appeal will be considered at all. Legal aid is hard to access, interpretation can be inadequate, and appeals do not automatically suspend removal. Against this backdrop, IOM’s offer of a ticket out – with some reintegration assistance – can look less like an opportunity and more like an exit from a system designed to wear people down.

“Voluntary returns”, as critical analyses and our witnesses underline, are rarely truly voluntary. For rejected asylum seekers and long‑term detainees, AVRR often appears as the only viable way to avoid forced return or endless detention. This raises serious questions about consent: can a decision taken in such conditions be considered free, informed and uncoerced?

EU externalisation and “return hubs”

Lukavica also needs to be understood in the context of EU migration policy, particularly the growing focus on returns and externalisation. The EU’s proposed Return Regulation, currently under negotiation, would make it easier for Member States to deport people to so‑called “safe third countries”, including those in the Western Balkans. Bosnia is already being talked about in Brussels as a potential “return hub” – a place where people removed from EU territory could be held pending deportation onwards.

Our report documents how EU funding has helped build and expand detention infrastructure in BiH, including the original construction of Lukavica in 2009 and its subsequent enlargement. At the same time, EU officials praise Bosnia’s “effective” forced returns, framing them as a benchmark for the region.

This combination, funding for detention infrastructure, political pressure to increase returns, and praise for forced deportations, encourages a system in which centres like Lukavica are not an unfortunate side effect, but a central feature of how migration is managed at Europe’s edges.

Camps, prisons and blurred boundaries

Lukavica does not stand alone. It is part of a wider landscape of control that includes reception centres, ordinary prisons and police‑run holding cells, each with their own human rights concerns.

CPT reports have documented widespread ill‑treatment in BiH police custody, including beatings, prolonged handcuffing, denial of food or water and poor conditions in cells. Remand prisoners have been described as spending more than 22 hours per day locked in overcrowded cells with minimal activity and inadequate health care.

Our fieldwork has found that people on the move are sometimes held in ordinary prisons for months, often without clear charges, facing discrimination, intra‑cell violence and barriers to medical care. Some of them are then transferred to Lukavica at the end of their sentence to await deportation, moving from one closed and opaque system to another.

Reception centres like Blazuj and Lipa, officially created as humanitarian spaces, are closely intertwined with this control system. Police raids in these camps – justified as responses to security concerns or crime – can feed people directly into Lukavica, while the ever‑present threat of detention hangs over those viewed as “problematic” or “security‑relevant”.

Shrinking space for scrutiny and resistance

As the detention–return apparatus grows, the space for independent oversight and resistance is shrinking. Vaša Prava, already the only NGO providing legal aid in Lukavica, is facing capacity cuts and funding challenges, limiting even further how many people they can represent. The BH Women Initiative Foundation, which once offered psychosocial support, has had to scale down and is no longer able to provide services in the centre.

The BiH Ombudsman, formally responsible for monitoring places of detention as the National Preventive Mechanism under OPCAT, has seen its access curtailed – including being denied entry to Lukavica in 2024 when trying to follow up on a complaint, a move she described as unlawful. International bodies like the CPT and Human Rights Watch can still visit, but only under SFA‑controlled conditions, with limited ability to talk to detainees in private or follow up individual cases.

Meanwhile, public discourse has grown increasingly hostile to NGOs and human rights defenders, who are frequently portrayed as over‑funded or acting “against the state”. This makes it harder to push for alternatives to detention, to challenge abusive deportations, or to even access basic information about who is being held and for how long.

Why Lukavica’s return system matters beyond Bosnia

At first glance, Lukavica might seem like a local issue , one detention centre in one small country. But the forces shaping it are anything but local. EU funding and policy priorities, IOM’s global architecture of “migration management”, and regional politics all converge on this one facility.

When the EU praises Bosnia for its “effective” returns, funds IOM to expand detention capacity, and pushes regulations that would send more people to “safe third countries”, it is not only outsourcing border control; it is also outsourcing responsibility for the human rights consequences. Lukavica becomes a testing ground for how far detention and deportation can be normalised in the name of managing migration.

Our report argues that this trajectory must be reversed. Bosnia should prohibit the detention of children and make alternatives to detention the norm, not the exception. Legal access must be guaranteed in practice, not just on paper, and AVRR must be genuinely voluntary, with full information and meaningful alternatives. IOM and the EU need to stop expanding detention infrastructure and instead tie funding to concrete human rights reforms and transparent oversight.

Until then, Lukavica will remain more than a place where people wait for paperwork. It will be a symbol of a wider system in which “helping people go home” and “protecting borders” are used to justify locking people away – often far from view, and far from the rights they are owed.