BOSANSKI NOVI, Bosnia-Hercegovina, 9 October 2007 — Safet Music is so desperate to return to the home he fled at the start of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war that he is willing to fund its reconstruction by selling one of his kidneys.
“I’m not the only one for whom the war destroyed everything. I know the state cannot repair everything in 24 hours, but we have been waiting for far too long,” said Music, standing beside ruins that were once his family home.
“I am so desperate that I would not hesitate to sell a kidney for 3,500 dollars” even though it is illegal, said the 36-year-old Muslim.
Music, who returned to his hometown of Bosanski Novi in 2002, has for the past two years lived for free in a partly damaged house owned by a former refugee.
Music, his mentally ill wife Edina and two children aged 15 and 11, are forced to eke out a living on the $56 dollars they receive in social aid each month.
All but nine dollars of this government handout are spent on the medicine his wife needs, making simple needs like bread a luxury.
“I have been contacting every institution to help me to reconstruct the house. I don’t know whom to approach anymore,” said Music, who along with his eldest son does odd jobs like wood chopping to supplement the family income.
“It seems that the only way out is to sell a kidney in order to get the money,” he said in a faint voice as he flicked through a collection of x-rays and documents he has gathered about the medical procedure.
The sale of human organs is illegal in Bosnia, but some people like Music have been putting ads in local newspapers offering their body parts for sale in a bid to break out of poverty. The authorities have issued warnings against such moves, notably after reports that some locals were traveling to certain Asian countries to have their kidneys removed in return for cash.
Bosanski Novi, a picturesque town at the confluence of the Sana and Una rivers on the western border with Croatia, was “ethnically cleansed” by Serb forces at the outbreak of war.
Encouraged by signs of postwar progress, families like the Musics have since returned but continue to face hardships such as joblessness and slow support in reconstructing their homes.
Around 320,000 houses have been rebuilt since the war left some 2.2 million Bosnians homeless.
But the fate of the Music family is still all too common — some 45,000 homes still need to be reconstructed, and this is happening at an increasingly slow rate, causing worries about the plight of the half a million people still listed as refugees.
“We thought that the reconstruction work would be completed by 2007, but that is not even close to being fulfilled,” an official from the human rights and Refugee Ministry told AFP. The authorities blame a shortage of funds.
“Unfortunately our budget is not sufficient to rebuild everything that was destroyed during the war,” said Bosnian Serb Refugee Minister Omer Brankovic.
A large number of Bosnia’s displaced are elderly and have no income, so the government is planning to build nursing homes to accommodate them as they would not be able to live on their own, he added.
Some 135,000 people have voiced their wish to return this year while the government estimates that some $705 million is needed to build apartments and ensure their sustainable return.
