Related Research Articles
Bosnia and Herzegovina, abbreviated BiH or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. The capital and largest city is Sarajevo. Bosnia and Herzegovina borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to the north and southwest. It is not entirely landlocked; in the south it has a narrow coast on the Adriatic Sea within the Mediterranean, which is about 20 kilometres long and surrounds the town of Neum. Bosnia, which is the inland region of the country, has a moderate continental climate with hot summers and cold, snowy winters. In the central and eastern regions of the country, the geography is mountainous, in the northwest it is moderately hilly, and in the northeast it is predominantly flat. Herzegovina, which is the smaller, southern region of the country, has a Mediterranean climate and is mostly mountainous.
The Romani, colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. Most of the Romani people live in Europe, and diaspora populations also live in the Americas.
Sarajevo is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population of 275,524 in its administrative limits. The Sarajevo metropolitan area including Sarajevo Canton, East Sarajevo and nearby municipalities is home to 555,210 inhabitants. Located within the greater Sarajevo valley of Bosnia, it is surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of the Balkans, a region of Southern Europe.
Doboj is a city located in Republika Srpska, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is situated on the banks of Bosna river, in the northern region of the Republika Srpska. As of 2013, it has a population of 71,441 inhabitants.
Gurbeti or Kurbet also Kurbat are a sub-group of the Romani people living in Cyprus, Turkey, Crimea, Albania, Serbia and former Yugoslavia whose members are Eastern Orthodox and Muslim Roma. The Gurbeti make up approximately two thirds of the population of Roma in Macva, many of whom work in agriculture. In Kosovo, other Romani groups viewed the Gurbeti negatively.
On 25 May 1995, the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) launched an artillery attack against the town of Tuzla, which left 71 dead and 240 wounded. The event is also known as the Tuzla massacre.
Christopher Newbury is a British Conservative politician. He was a member of the Congress of the Council of Europe from 1998 to 2010 and since 2009 has been a member of the new Wiltshire Council, created that year.
The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities is the pan-European political assembly representing local and regional authorities from the forty-seven member states of the Council of Europe. Its role is to promote local and regional democracy, improve local and regional governance and strengthen authorities' self-government, according to the principles laid down in the European Charter of Local Self-Government. It is made up of two chambers, the Chamber of Local Authorities and the Chamber of Regions and holds its plenary sessions twice a year at the Palace of Europe in Strasbourg, where its permanent Secretariat is located.
Serbia has only one nationwide official language, which is Serbian. Other languages spoken in Serbia include Hungarian, Bosnian, Romani, Slovak, Albanian, Romanian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Rusyn, etc.
Bosniaks are the fourth largest ethnic group in Serbia after Serbs, Hungarians and Roma, numbering 145,278 or 2.02% of the population according to the 2011 census. They are concentrated in south-western Serbia, and their cultural centre is Novi Pazar.
The Roma people have several distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Iberian Calé or Caló, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans in the early 12th century, from a migration out of the Indian subcontinent beginning about 1st century - 2nd century AD. They settled in the areas of present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Roma population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.
The official language of North Macedonia is Macedonian, while Albanian has co-official status. Macedonian is spoken by roughly two-thirds of the population natively, and as a second language by much of the rest of the population. Albanian is the largest minority language. There are a further five national minority languages: Turkish, Romani, Serbian, Bosnian, and Aromanian. The Macedonian Sign Language is the country's official sign language.
The most widely spread religion in Bosnia and Herzegovina is Islam and a large portion of the Muslims of Bosnia declared themselves as followers of the Sunni branch of Islam, the majority of Sunnis follow the Hanafi school of thought, also known as a madhab. The State Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the entity Constitutions of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska provide for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respects this right in ethnically integrated areas or in areas where government officials are of the majority religion; the state-level Law on Religious Freedom also provides comprehensive rights to religious communities. However, local authorities sometimes restricted the right to worship of adherents of religious groups in areas where such persons are in the minority. 45% of Herzegovinian and Bosnian Muslims described themselves as Sunni Muslims while 47% described themselves as just Muslims.
The Romani people in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the largest of the 17 national minorities in the country, although—due to the stigma attached to the label—this is often not reflected in statistics and censuses.
Tilman Zülch is a German human rights activist. He is the founder and general secretary of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP).
Bosnians are people identified with the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina or with the region of Bosnia. As a common demonym, the term Bosnians refers to all inhabitants/citizens of the country, regardless of any ethnic, cultural or religious affiliation. It can also be used as a designation for anyone who is descended from the region of Bosnia. Also, a Bosnian can be anyone who holds citizenship of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and thus is largely synonymous with the all-encompassing national demonym Bosnians and Herzegovinians. This includes, but is not limited to, members of the constituent ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats. Those who reside in the smaller geographical region of Herzegovina usually prefer to identify as Herzegovinians.
The European Alliance of Cities and Regions for Roma Inclusion is an initiative from the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The Alliance currently gathers 130 Cities and Regional authorities from 29 countries.
The Constitution of Croatia in its preamble defines Croatia as a nation state of ethnic Croats, a country of traditionally present communities that the constitution recognizes as national minorities and a country of all its citizens. National minorities explicitly enumerated and recognized in the Constitution are Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Austrians, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Bosniaks, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles, Romani, Romanians, Istro-Romanians ("Vlachs"), Turks and Albanians. Article 12 of the constitution states that the official language in Croatia is Croatian, but also states that in some local governments another language and Cyrillic or some other script can be introduced in official use. Croatia recognises the following languages: Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Czech, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish and Ukrainian.
Municipal elections were held in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 2 October 2016.
Hedina Tahirović-Sijerčić is a Bosnian Gurbeti Romani journalist, broadcaster, writer, translator, linguistic researcher and teacher, currently residing in Canada. She was a popular television and radio broadcaster in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and later went on to become a writer, publishing children's books, poetry, and memoirs. She is a scholar of the Gurbeti dialect of the Romani language and has published several dictionaries and archives of folk tales, and is active in efforts to preserve Romani culture. Her writing has won several awards in Poland, Croatia, and Sarajevo.
References
- ↑ "Dosta-Congress Prize for Municipalities".
- ↑ "Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe - Home".
- ↑ "Dosta!".
- ↑ DC, Conseil de l'Europe, Direction de la Communication, Tous les niveaux de la. "Direction de la Communication - Cérémonie de remise du " Prix Dosta !-Congrès pour les municipalités "".
- ↑ levels, Council of Europe, Directorate of Communications, All DC. "Directorate of Communications - Four cities to be awarded the 2008 Dosta!-Congress Prize for Municipalities".
- ↑ levels, Council of Europe, Directorate of Communications, All DC. "Directorate of Communications - Four cities awarded the "3rd Dosta!-Congress Prize for Municipalities"".
- ↑ levels, Council of Europe, Directorate of Communications, All DC. "Directorate of Communications - Dosta!-Congress Prize Awarded to 3 Cities and Regions".
- ↑ "Dosta-Congress Prize for Municipalities".
- ↑ "Roma and travellers". www.coe.int. Archived from the original on 2010-10-15.