The limited success of anti-corruption efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina until now means that “citizens have to endure injustice and the threat of physical harm, day after day and in every part of the country,” High Representative and EU Special Representative Valentin Inzko said today.

The HR/EUSR was speaking at an anti-corruption seminar organised by the Sarajevo Faculty of Criminology and Security Studies. The seminar brought together judicial, police and academic experts from across the region.

The HR/EUSR said the establishment of the BiH Agency for the Prevention of Corruption and the Coordination of the Fight against Corruption, in January this year, was a bright spot in an otherwise grim landscape. The Agency will work on identifying and eliminating causes of corruption, and deterring persons from committing corruption-related criminal acts.

“The real reason that corruption remains a scourge is that it is accepted,” he said. “Corruption flourishes because a minority gets away with it and the majority lets them. Yet corruption is a crime and it needs to be treated as a crime. Only when honest citizens and the media start reporting corruption to the police, to prosecutors and to the public as a matter of course, it will become dangerous for officials in this country to accept bribes.”

The full text of the HR/EUSR’s speech can be accessed at www.ohr.int and www.eusrbih.eu