On 20 June, World Refugee Day was marked in Belgrade with the ceremonial awarding of contracts for the purchase of 60 Regional Housing Programme (RHP) apartments for refugee families from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Croatia.

In addition to the beneficiaries, the event in Belgrade was attended by Nemanja Starović, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Nicola Bertolini, Head of Cooperation at the Delegation of the European Union to Serbia; Richard Kohli, Head of Cooperation at the Swiss Embassy to Serbia, Swiss Cooperation Office; Ambassador Jan Braathu, Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia; Stefanie Krause, Acting Representative of UNHCR in Serbia; Vladimir Cucić, Serbian Commissioner for Refugees and Migration; Nataša Stanisavljević, Secretary for Social Protection in the City of Belgrade, and Dušan Kovačević, Head of the Public Sector Projects Implementation Unit Ltd.

On behalf of the European Union, the largest RHP donor, Mr Bertolini noted: “One of the main goals of the EU is to make a dignified life available to our citizens. This programme has helped over 6,000 families in Serbia to achieve this goal.”

Three days prior to the Belgrade event, contracts for 21 purchased village houses were handed over to refugee families in Odžaci, Serbia.