Yearbook 2019
 Bosnia and Herzegovina. It took four months after the
October 2018 election before the upper house could be formed
in February. Negotiations to form the Council of Ministers
began in March, but it would take until August before the
three major parties, representing Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian
Croats and Bosniaks, could agree on an agreement on the
conditions for a new central government. According to
CountryAAH, the problems of
government formation in June led to the Council of Europe
shutting down Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Parliamentary
Assembly (PACE).
In March, the UN Court of Justice in The Hague sentenced
former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić to life
imprisonment. His previous sentence in 2016 on 40 years in
prison for war crimes during the Balkan War in the 1990s is
now sharpened now. In September, the first pride parade in
the country's history was organized. Over 2,000 people
participated - guarded, or protected, by 1,100 police
officers.
In November, the country's government and Presidential
President Željko Komšić called on France's Ambassador
Guillaume Rousson to ask what French President Emmanuel
Macron meant when he called Bosnia and Herzegovina "a
ticking time-lapse bomb". Macron's statement concerned
returning jihadists.
In January 2005, for the first time, the Bosnian Serbian
authorities handed over a war criminal suspect to the Hague
Tribunal. It happened 10 days after the US blocked the
transfer of $ 10 million. US $ in assistance.
In February 2006, the Council of Europe published a list
of 5 European countries that had not published information
on the CIA's secret flights of prisoners of war. Bosnia and
Herzegovina was one of these 5 countries. The CIA uses the
secret flights to fly prisoners around secret torture
centers around the world.
In June 2007, a report funded by the Norwegian government
was published and conducted by a Bosnian NGO on deaths
during the war in the country in the 1990's. Acc. the report
killed 97,200 Bosnians during the civil war. Of these, 65%
are Bosnian Muslims, 25% are Bosnian Serbs and 8% are
Bosnian Croats. The figure of 97,200 was only half of what
had been operated until then.
In December 2009, the European Court of Human Rights
issued a ruling in a case brought before the court by two
Bosnians: Dervo Sejdić (a Romani) and Jakob Finci (a Jew).
The order said that Bosnia and Herzegovina's constitution
and electoral law were in violation of human rights, as it
alone recognizes 3 groups in the country: Bosniaks, Croats
and Serbs. Even 5 years later, the country had not aligned
its legislation with the Convention on Human Rights. In
particular, this involved discrimination against the large
Roma and Jewish minorities.
Bosnia and Herzegovina became a candidate for accession
to NATO in April 2010. It is also a potential candidate for
accession to the EU.
War criminal Ratko Mladić was arrested in a village in
northern Serbia in May 2011 and tried in court in The Hague.
A wave of protests ran across the country in February
2014. It started in Tuzla where, at the turn of the century,
the local government had sold a number of large state-owned
businesses to private individuals. The deal was for them to
invest, but instead they plundered the companies for values,
failed to pay the workers their wages, and eventually
completely shut down the companies. That caused unemployment
to rise further. It was already 27-47% besides the country.
The protesters demanded from local politicians that they, as
those responsible for the privatizations, step in and pay
compensation for layoffs and pensions that had been missing.
The demonstrations developed violently over the course of a
few days as protesters tried to storm the Tuzla government
building. The demonstrations against unemployment and the
government's failed economic policies then spread to all
major cities in the country. The demonstrations meant that
the prime ministers in 4 of the country's cantons resigned,
but the protesters' demands remained unanswered. During the
spring, the demonstrations ran out into the sand.
In October 2015, the country held parliamentary and
presidential elections. The parliamentary elections were won
by Izetbegović's SDA, which received 10 seats - an increase
of 3; SNSD went back 2 mandates and got 6, while SDS went 1
ahead and got 5. The remaining mandates went to 9 smaller
parties. In the parliamentary elections, 3 - 1 had to be
elected for each of the ethnic groups. The Bosnians chose
Bakir Izetbegović, the Croats chose Dragan Čović; the Serbs
chose Mladen Ivanić. If the spring protest movement could be
read, it was in the form of a right slide. The multi-ethnic
social democracy SDP lost 5 seats, while the religiously
conservative SDA advanced 3.
In February 2016, Bosnia and Herzegovina applied for
admission to the EU. The application was approved by the EU
in September, after which the preparations for admission
were initiated. |
