Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 18/2/2024; Author: Nerma Šehović
A report tailored to the ruling party in Republika Srpska was broadcasted in the RTRS (Radio television of Republika Srpska) News, in which users of USAID funds were labelled as foreign mercenaries, and the “foreign agents law” was presented as a necessary measure for regulating civil society. However, the facts about the funds the authorities in RS received from USAID were left out.
On his first day in office (January 20, 2025), U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting U.S. foreign aid for 90 days in order to conduct an evaluation and align the aid with the policies of his administration. This order negatively affected numerous recipients of U.S. aid, which is mostly distributed through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Among them are governments, media, and humanitarian organizations.
Trump’s actions were enthusiastically welcomed by certain political figures, media outlets, and organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region (1, 2). One of the most vocal supporters in recent weeks has been the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, who called USAID a “criminal organization”, labelled organizations and individuals receiving funds from this agency as “mercenaries” and “foreign agents”, and announced an investigation into its activities in this entity (link). He also announced plans to pass a law for a special registry and public work of non-profit organizations, colloquially known as the “foreign agents law”. His claims were covered by our partner fact-checking platform Istinomjer.
Dodik’s views were quickly supported by some media outlets in Republika Srpska. On February 9, 2025, a report about USAID was aired on the news program of the Radio-Television of Republika Srpska (RTRS). In addition to Dodik’s statements about the “criminality” of USAID and aid recipients as “mercenaries”, the report claimed that “expert public opinion” states that the adoption of the “foreign agents law” is necessary to “regulate the non-governmental sector, which sometimes works to overthrow legitimately elected governments” and to “protect identity”.
The report quoted Radovan Kovacevic, a delegate in the Serb Club in the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who said that USAID had invested nearly a billion marks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which “best illustrates how strong and powerful the impact on Republika Srpska has been”. The report also cited “estimates” by academic Kosta Cavoski regarding the direction of USAID funds in Bosnia and Herzegovina:
In my opinion, all that massive American aid that came to Bosnia and Herzegovina went to both the Muslims and Croats, but I assume mostly to the Serbian opposition that is against Dodik, so, in Banja Luka and others who are in dire need of money, and that is financed.
The RTRS report mentioned that the “foreign agents law”, which the RS government plans to pass, is already in effect in several countries, including the United States.
Thus, in the report from Dnevnik 2, USAID is presented as a criminal organization, the recipients of the agency’s funds as “mercenaries”, and the “foreign agents act” as a useful and necessary measure for regulating the non-governmental sector in Republika Srpska.
The claims from the report were also recounted in an article published on the same day on the RTRS website. The article was reposted by the website Princip News.
What is USAID and what has it financed in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is a U.S. government agency responsible for providing assistance to countries recovering from disaster, fighting poverty, or implementing democratic reforms. It was established by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
USAID has been present in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995. This American agency invested significant funds into the reconstruction of infrastructure and the economy in the post-war years. In the first ten years after the war, which lasted from 1992 to 1995, USAID financed the reconstruction of war-damaged roads, bridges, factories, hospitals, schools, and water supply systems. They also provided funds for the rebuilding or starting of businesses, as well as for the return of displaced persons to their pre-war homes. Since then, USAID has continued its operations in BiH through financing projects in entrepreneurship, tourism, independent media, social assistance, developing democracy, and social reintegration (link, link).
Although much of the public discourse in recent weeks has focused on the funds USAID provided to non-governmental organizations, they are not the only recipients of their aid. A significant portion of the funds that USAID invested in BiH between 1995 and 2020 – 620 million out of 1.9 billion – went to the authorities in Republika Srpska. This accounts for 32% of the total aid that USAID provided to Bosnia and Herzegovina from the war to 2020.
These funds financed projects such as the creation of a tax and non-tax payment registry, systems for control and collection of contributions, a registry of inspection procedures, improvements in the treasury system for healthcare institutions, and similar projects in Republika Srpska.
Nearly one-third of USAID’s funds in BiH, which were received by the government of Republika Srpska, are not mentioned in the RTRS report on the “criminal organization” and “foreign mercenaries”, although it is a well-known fact.
Contrary to the criticisms from 2025, Dodik publicly thanked USAID in 2022 for their help in developing Republika Srpska:
We remain dedicated to cooperating with the USAID staff and remain committed to projects that we will jointly select or jointly design within the scope of what local communities are interested in, including Republika Srpska as a whole, and I, of course, support all those projects at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina (…)
I am very pleased to have noticed that in the plans of Ms. Power [Samantha Power, USAID Administrator], there is no distinction between Republika Srpska and the Federation, that she will continue to support projects in Republika Srpska, which was important for us to evaluate that part of the meeting, related to USAID, as positive.
We were unable to find data on whether USAID ever (and if so, to what extent) directly financed opposition parties in Republika Srpska (1, 2, 3, 4). In any case, they could hardly have “outdone” the institutions of this entity in terms of the percentage and amount of USAID funds allocated.
Namely, data on the expenditure of U.S. funds for foreign aid has been available for years on the U.S. government-run website Foreign Assistance. From this website, it is possible to “download” data related to specific countries, and information on U.S. funds spent in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be found at this link. In this database, one can see whether the funds were allocated to the government, NGOs, religious groups, universities, or companies, the amount of funds, and the project for which the funds were allocated. These are not just USAID funds, but all U.S. government funds. In the section for “project implementation partners”, companies and the government dominate.
This data was analyzed by our partner website, Istinomjer, in an analysis published on February 14, 2025, concluding that the claim that USAID invested nearly a billion marks, or 402 million dollars, in the last four years is inaccurate:
The accurate information is that 402,179,947 dollars were directed to Bosnia and Herzegovina. This amount, aside from USAID funds, includes funds from other U.S. institutions, so of these 402 million dollars, 195 million came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, and the Department of the Army.
When these 402 million dollars are allocated to all these institutions, USAID’s share amounts to 207.3 million dollars.
Finally, when administrative costs (salaries, contributions, utilities, rents, etc.) are subtracted from the total amount, approximately 343.4 million dollars in U.S. government funds reached Bosnia and Herzegovina during the five-year period from 2020 to 2024, with USAID accounting for 159.5 million dollars.
Thus, USAID has invested 159.5 million dollars in BiH since 2020, with part of the funds going to the authorities, some to companies, NGOs, and other categories. Claims about a billion marks for destroying Republika Srpska and making huge payments to opposition parties in this entity are absurd.
What are the facts about the “Foreign Agents Act”?
The government of Republika Srpska adopted the Draft Law on the Special Register and Public Work of Non-Profit Organizations in March 2023. This law would define all NGOs registered in RS that receive any financial assistance from foreign sources as “foreign agents”, subject them to special supervision, and require them to submit special financial reports twice a year. It would also allow anyone to request an inspection of their finances, and there was even a possibility of banning their operation under circumstances already defined by the law.
The draft was withdrawn from the procedure in the National Assembly of RS in May 2024. Dodik stated that the reason for this was public objections and the need to align the law with “European legal practice”.
However, after Trump’s inauguration and the freezing of USAID funds, the authorities in RS returned the law to the agenda. The RS government approved the draft law on February 6. RS Justice Minister Milos Bukejlovic said that the harshest measure envisaged by the law would be the “shutdown of a non-governmental organization”, while Dodik announced that “the status of foreign agents will be established for all those who receive money from foreign governments to undermine RS”, as stated in the article published on the Radio Free Europe website on February 6.
The RTRS report falsely claims that such a “Foreign Agents Act” is already in effect in the United States. This claim has been made in previous years when the RS authorities attempted to pass the law. Moreover, the law was often described as “American”.
As explained by Raskrinkavanje in an analysis from April 2023, there are no legal provisions in the U.S. that restrict the operations of NGOs in the way envisioned by the “Foreign Agents Act” proposed by Dodik. When such comparisons are made with the U.S., they refer to the U.S. FARA law (Foreign Agents Registration Act), which has nothing to do with non-governmental organizations. This law, adopted in 1938, applies to individuals and entities operating in the country on behalf of a “foreign principal” and advocating for their interests, not NGOs receiving foreign funds.
Therefore, unlike the law being proposed in RS, this U.S. law does not apply to all non-profit organizations receiving foreign funds. As explained in Raskrinkavanje’s analysis, “The FARA law does not contain the mechanisms envisaged in the Draft Law on the Special Register and Public Work of Non-Profit Organizations, such as regular annual inspections for organizations with foreign donors”.
The law being proposed in RS is much more similar to Russia’s “Foreign Agents Law”. As explained in Raskrinkavanje’s analysis published on August 26, 2024, Russia adopted a law in 2012 regulating the activities of non-profit organizations acting as foreign agents. According to this law, all NGOs receiving financial aid from abroad had to register as “foreign agents” and display this label on all their public communications. The analysis by Raskrinkavanje states the following:
Over the past 12 years, the law has undergone several amendments, each time with more repressive measures (1, 2). The amendments in 2017 allowed media to be recognized as foreign agents; in 2019, the natural entity could also be classified in this way; in 2022, anyone “who is under any foreign influence” could be declared a foreign agent, and in 2024, such individuals were prohibited from participating in elections. Inspections that made it harder for targeted organizations to operate, fines for associations that refused to register as “foreign agents”, and other mechanisms established by this law led to the closure or “emigration” of a large number of organizations, particularly those engaged in monitoring corruption and advocating for the respect of human rights.
The article by the International Press Institute, published in July 2022, states that over time, the concept of “foreign funding” that would label someone a “foreign agent” includes attending an international conference organized by a foreign organization or even receiving money from family and friends abroad. These measures led to the closure or “emigration” of many organizations, especially those dealing with corruption monitoring and advocating for human rights.
In addition to claiming that the same law exists in the U.S. the RTRS report manipulatively claimed that the “professional public” supports the adoption of the “Foreign Agents Act” in RS as something positive and necessary, presenting statements from public officials Ljubisa Malenica and Lazar Stjepanovic.
The majority opinion of the professional public was clear even last year when numerous activists, lawyers, and professors expressed opposition to the adoption of this law, emphasizing its repressive potential.
Thus, instead of objective, truthful, and politically impartial reporting, the public service RTRS has resorted to propaganda and misleading the public in favor of the ruling party in Republika Srpska and their interests. Based on the facts, the claims that the “Foreign Agents Law” in RS is the same as the law in the USA, and that “the expert public” believes its adoption is necessary, are assessed as manipulation of facts. We give the same assessment to the claim that most USAID aid has gone to opposition parties in RS.
The RTRS report is also assessed as biased reporting because it omitted information that the government in Republika Srpska has used significant USAID funds and missed the opportunity to confront its current criticisms with previous positive evaluations of USAID’s activities.
