jedan glasnik na engleskom, za stare dane

## Yes, Bosnia Dayton Constitution is Still Violating its Own Citizens Rights: An analysis of the decision in Kovacevic vs. Bosnia Human Rights Case By: Dr. Tarik Borogovac The Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, signed 30 years ago in Dayton, Ohio, USA, put into law the key goals that motivated perpetrators of ethnic cleansing and genocide during the Bosnian war. This is obvious. For example, it gave legal status and control over half of Bosnia territory to the self-declared Serb ethnic supremacist state, called "the Republic of the Serbs" (RS), whose political and military leaders Karadzic and Mladic, and the forces that they commanded, were all judged guilty of genocide committed in the creation of the RS. Srebrenica to this day is in the territory of the RS, based on the Dayton agreement and constitution. The RS has never allowed meaningful return of forced out non-Serb populations to their home towns and properties, as the Dayton Agreement mandates, because the RS uses its discriminatory laws and street level intimidation carried out with impunity. So while this is a violation of the Dayton Agreement, the Dayton Constitution is what enables it. On the level of Bosnia, the Dayton constitution enshrines ethnic apartheid via a complex web of quotas in election and governance rules for every government institution. It leaves little room for those outside the main ethnic triad - or for anyone who refused to define their identity by ethnicity at all. Even for members of one of the major ethnicities, who happen to live on the wrong side of a convoluted internal territory border. Unsurprisingly this system has been consistently rejected by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which has repeatedly judged that the constitution to be violation of fundamental rights. Here are those decisions: - **Ethnic Exclusion from High Office:** Only those who declare themselves as Bosniak, Croat, or Serb can run for the country’s tripartite Presidency or its upper house, the House of Peoples. Jews, Roma, and anyone else - no matter how long their family has lived in Bosnia - are barred from these posts (*Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 2009) [2]. - **Punishing Non-Ethnic Identity:** Citizens who identify simply as “Bosnian,” or who refuse to affiliate with any group, are excluded from top political roles (*Zornić v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 2014) [3]. - **Geographic Discrimination:** Even among the “constituent peoples,” where you live determines your rights. A Bosniak in Republika Srpska, or a Serb in the Federation, cannot run for President from their home entity (*Pilav v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 2016) [4]. - **Systemic Barriers for “Others”:** Smaller minorities, like Albanians, face the same blockades (*Šlaku v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 2016) [5]. - **Local Democracy Denied:** Mostar’s residents went years without local elections due to political deadlock, a situation the Court found violated the right to free elections (*Baralija v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 2019) [6]. The ECHR’s message has been consistent: Bosnia’s constitution, as it stands, makes second-class citizens out of hundreds of thousands of people. The judgments are binding, and the obligation to reform is clear, and the repeated failure has served as a full stop to any integration of Bosnia into the EU - until the discrimination and violations of human rights that are at the heart of the Dayton Constitution are fixed. ### The Kovacevic Case When Slaven Kovacevic also challenged the system, the ECHR’s initial ruling in 2023 echoed its earlier verdicts: Bosnia’s ethnic and territorial restrictions violate the European Convention on Human Rights [7]. But on appeal, the Grand Chamber overturned the judgment. We are waiting for the full decision to be posted, but even from what has been released, it is clearly a decision on the technicalities of the case, and not because it found Bosnia's system as lawful. The court merely denied this particular applicant’s standing and ruled that this particular suit did not go through all available legal steps within Bosnia - a required condition before a case is eligible to be heard by the ECHR [8]. So, the Court did not revisit the substance of Bosnia’s constitutional discrimination, and all the other rulings against Bosnia's constitution - *Sejdić and Finci*, *Zornić*, *Pilav*, and others - remain untouched and binding. It is quite certain that future cases making similar complaints will be similarly successful as the initial ruling in this case, and all the past and still valid rulings, as long as those new cases follow correct technical procedures. Despite this, certain political figures and outlets have seized on the procedural dismissal to claim vindication for Bosnia’s ethnicty-based model. Vedran Skobic of the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH), for example, declared that the ruling “reaffirms that Bosnia and Herzegovina is, and must remain, a pluralistic society where Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs are equal and recognised as constituent peoples”. This narrative has been echoed by party-aligned media and some nationalist commentators. But they are simply lying to their own supporters. Simply, Bosnia is going nowhere as long as it remains in violation of its citizens human rights, and the only possible way to change that is through abolishment of the ethnic principles that its constitution is based on. These politicians' supporters will eventually catch on. This situation also illustrates that peace agreements cannot be made on basis of denial of basic rights, and include mechanisms that facilitate permanent displacement, disposession or discrimination of people who have human, property and citizen rights. Starting wars to create ethnically clean or supremacist states or laws will always, in the end, fail. ## References 2. *Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 27996/06 \& 34836/06, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2009). 3. *Zornić v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 3681/06, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2014). 4. *Pilav v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 41939/07, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2016). 5. *Šlaku v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 56666/12, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2016). 6. *Baralija v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 30100/18, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2019). 7. *Kovačević v. Bosnia and Herzegovina*, 43651/22, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2023). 8. *Kovačević v. Bosnia and Herzegovina* (Grand Chamber), 43651/22, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2024). 9. N1 Info. (2024). “HDZ BiH: Odluka Suda u Strasbourgu potvrđuje konstitutivnost naroda u BiH.” [HDZ BiH: Strasbourg Court Decision Confirms the Constituent Peoples in BiH]. 10. Klix.ba. (2024). “Političke reakcije na odluku Suda u Strasbourgu.” [Political reactions to the Strasbourg Court decision].