"For 7000 Bosnians the war still isn't over " – Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker / Society for Threatened Peoples and Merhamet e.V. present a disturbing reminder of the "forgotten refugees"

20 years after the start of the Bosnian War (1992 -1995), some 7000 Bosnians - among them women, children and elderly survivors of the genocide at Srebrenica - continue to live in former barracks and other substandard accommodation without adequate water, sanitation or electricity. On 4 October 2012 the Bosnian relief and welfare organisation Merhamet, in cooperation with GfbV/STP, will be bringing a selection of images of desperate poverty in the heart of Europe to the Paulskirche in Frankfurt.

We should like to invite you to the

Opening of the Exhibition

"Forgotten Refugees in Bosnia and Herzegovina"

on Tuesday 4 October 2012, at 6 p.m. at the Kaisersaal (Emperor's Hall) at the Town Hall and afterwards in the Exhibition Room at the Paulskirche, Frankfurt am Main

Speakers: Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg, Frankfurt city councillor with responsibility for community integration, former High Representative and EU Special Representative in Bosnia Dr. Christian Schwarz-Schilling and GfbV/STP General Secretary Tilman Zülch. The exhibition will continue at the Paulskirche until 11 October and then travel on to Berlin, Bonn, Dresden and Leipzig.

"These unforgettable pictures in which photographers Philipp von Recklinghausen and Cornelia Suhan have captured the essence of this terrible poverty and hopelessness are a cry for help", GfbV/STP's General Secretary Tilman Zülch believes. "Surviving on minimal incomes of a few euros every month, these 7000 refugees and displaced persons remain trapped in these calamitous circumstances just as if the war had never ended."

Most of the 160 so-called refugee camps lack electricity and mains water supplies. Refugees and displaced persons live crowded together in cramped, mouldy accommodation, forced to share cooking facilities and sanitary arrangements. Many of them, Bosniaks/Bosnian Muslims, originally from areas of Bosnia now under Serb control, are the traumatised survivors of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are unable to return home to a system of apartheid and discrimination. Many fear finding themselves face to face again with the perpetrators of massacres, murder, rape and torture. During the war 2.2 million Bosnians were forced to flee their homes. Oly one million have been able to return to their homes in a devastated and divided country. In the Republika Srpska entity administered by supporters of Milosevic und Karadzic, returning non-Serbs (formerly as much as 60 per cent of the population and now no more than five per cent) continue to face a life of oppression.