Webinar: Immigration Detention in Bosnia and Herzegovina — What Lukavica Reveals About a Global Crisis

On 23 June, Collective Aid hosted a webinar, “Immigration Detention: From Global Trends to Bosnia and Herzegovina,” bringing together voices from research and advocacy to examine the realities of immigration detention in Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond.

During the event, Collective Aid presented the organisation’s one of the latest report on conditions inside Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Lukavica Detention Centre. The report highlights serious concerns, including degrading living conditions, a near-total lack of independent monitoring, arbitrary detention, and major barriers to legal remedies.

The webinar also made clear that Bosnia’s detention policies do not exist in isolation. In his remarks, Michael Flynn, Executive Director of the Global Detention Project, placed Lukavica within a broader global pattern of immigration detention, showing how these practices are expanding under pressure from wealthier neighbouring states and reinforced by migration externalisation policies.

Flynn stressed the importance of exposing harmful practices, documenting the arbitrariness at the heart of immigration detention, and building evidence that can support protections grounded in universal human rights. He also underlined the need to ensure that people with lived experience of detention are central to this work.

Abdelaziz Muhamat, Refugee Advocacy Coordinator at the Global Detention Project, drew on his own experience of detention at the Manus Island Offshore Processing Facility to reflect on the striking similarities between Manus and Lukavica. Although the two sites are geographically far apart, he noted that both reflect a shared reality of isolation, uncertainty, and severe psychological harm.