SARAJEVO, FEBRUARY 20 (ONASA) – The UN’s World Day of Social Justice, which is celebrated on February 20 every year, aims to draw attention to the importance of social protection and equal access to economic, political and social rights for all.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is focusing its efforts in this regard, among other things, on assessing Bosnia and Herzegovina’s progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2: A world without hunger.
Although the right to food is one of the universal human rights, in Bosnia and Herzegovina it is not recognized through laws on social protection, and public kitchens are still the basic type of assistance for providing free hot meals to people in need.
From October 2022 to February 2023, UNDP conducted the first ever mapping of the spatial distribution, capacity, number of users and other important aspects of the work of all public kitchens in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the aim of developing concrete recommendations for public policies and technical measures that contribute to reducing hunger in the land.
The conducted research showed that there are currently 53 organizations in BiH for the distribution of free meals, with 34 facilities located in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 18 facilities in the Republic of Srpska and one facility in the Brčko District of BiH. The largest number of facilities are managed by humanitarian/non-profit organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The war in Ukraine has seriously disrupted global food and energy markets.
The consequence of the disruption in the global market was a further increase in energy and food prices, which had already started to happen after the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the difficulty in acquiring resources at the global level.
The current number of users in 53 public kitchens in BiH is close to 18.000.
The number of users increased by nearly 500 users in 2022 compared to 2021.
In 2021, there was a slight decrease in the number of users compared to 2020, which can be linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is important to note that the number of people who face difficult access to food every day is up to ten times higher, according to estimates by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, but due to various barriers they do not realize their right to a hot meal through public kitchens.
The most vulnerable categories of society among the users of public kitchens are pensioners, the unemployed, single parents, people with developmental disabilities, and members of the Roma population.
It is important to note that 70% of all kitchens in Bosnia and Herzegovina provide services other than food distribution, and very good examples of social entrepreneurship organized around the services of public kitchens have been recorded.
It is worrying that almost half of the public kitchens do not have enough financial resources to procure food, and even 94% of kitchens see the overall lack of financial resources as the biggest challenge facing their public kitchen.
Less than half of public kitchens can offer fresh fruit/vegetables as well as special products for infants and small children (48.08%), while only a small number of kitchens (21.15%) can offer meals for users with special dietary needs.
It is significant that 50% of organizations consider that they do not have sufficient resources for work – equipment and aids necessary to perform their activities. The most common equipment cited by kitchens as insufficient are delivery vehicles, ovens and stoves, refrigerators and kitchen appliances. UNDP responded to the basic needs of kitchens that indicated a lack of equipment, and procured ovens, refrigerators, freezers and other equipment for 19 public kitchens throughout the country.
The complete report on the state of public kitchens in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the Food Security Assessment for vulnerable population groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina, will be published in March 2023.
UNDP will continue to work with all responsible actors in society with the aim of drawing attention to a series of necessary improvements in the social protection system in Bosnia and Herzegovina so that the fight against food poverty becomes more inclusive and efficient, and “frontline” institutions such as public kitchens gain access to the necessary means for standardization and improvement of the service of providing hot meals to people in need