National Minority Councils
Since 2006, the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina established the Council of National Minorities, as a special advisory body to give opinions, advice and proposals to the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH on all matters concerning the law, position and interests of national minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The BiH National Minority Council is composed of 17 representatives of national minorities, one representative on behalf of each ethnic minority. [2]
The National Minority Council of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity was established in March 2016.
The National Minority Council of the Republika Srpska entity was established in 2005.
The National Minority Council of Sarajevo Canton was established in 2012, with extended powers of legislative initiative.
The National Minority Council of the Brcko District was established in May 2022, [4] [5] on the basis of the new district law on national minorities adopted in October 2020 [6]
Education in minority languages
Italian and Ukrainian are taught in one and four schools respectively in the town of Prnjavor (15 and 24 pupils in total in 2015). [2]
German, Russian, and Italian are taught as foreign languages in several high schools throughout the country. [2]
Associations and embassies also organise several elective courses of minority languages as foreign languages. [2]
Several newsletters and bulletins are published periodically in minority languages, including four in Slovene, and one each in Hungarian (Új dobos), [7] Macedonian (Vinozito), Italian (Stella d'Italia) and Czech (Banjalucki Krajani) [2]
Demographic features of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
The politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina are defined by a parliamentary, representative democratic framework, where the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, named by the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Legislative power is vested in both the Council of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Members of the Parliamentary Assembly are chosen according to a proportional representation system. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
Republika Srpska is one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is located in the north and the east of the country and has a population of 1,228,423 people as of the 2013 census. Its largest city and administrative centre is Banja Luka, lying on the Vrbas river, and with a population of about 138,963 people.
The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the two entities composing Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Republika Srpska. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of ten autonomous cantons with their own governments and legislatures.
The Posavina Canton is one of ten cantons of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the smallest canton with an area of only 330.85 km2 (128 sq mi). The canton is an exclave of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, being bordered by Republika Srpska and Brčko District to the south and the river Sava and Croatia to the north. Its capital is Orašje and the largest town is Odžak.
There is currently no official flag for the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The federation is part of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The federation adopted its own flag in 1996, but the flag and associated coat of arms were deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2007 and now it is considered to be a "de facto" flag. The federation has not yet adopted a new flag, anthem or coat of arms; instead the symbols of the central state are used for official purposes as a provisional solution.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Bosnia and Herzegovina may face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Both male and female forms of same-sex sexual activity are legal in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, households headed by same-sex couples are not eligible for the same legal protections available to opposite-sex couples.
Brčko is a city and the administrative seat of Brčko District, in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina. It lies on the banks of Sava river across from Croatia. As of 2013, it has a population of 39,893 inhabitants.
Under the "Law on Territorial Organization and Local Self-Government" adopted in 1994, Republika Srpska was divided into 80 municipalities. After the conclusion of the Dayton Peace Agreement, the law was amended in 1996 to reflect the changes to the entity's borders and now provides for the division of Republika Srpska into 64 municipalities.
The Inter-Entity Boundary Line is the administrative line that subdivides Bosnia and Herzegovina into two entities, Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The total length of the Inter-Entity Boundary Line is 1,080 km.
The Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina was amended once, in 2009, to include the outcome of the Brčko District final award. Several constitutional reforms were attempted between 2006 and 2014, to ensure its compliance with the case law of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina and following cases regarding ethnic- and residence-based discrimination in passive electoral rights for the Presidency and House of Peoples. None of these attempts have been successful so far, notwithstanding EU involvement and conditionality.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the smallest administrative unit is the municipality. Prior to the 1992–95 Bosnian War there were 109 municipalities in what was then Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ten of these formed the area of the capital Sarajevo.
The Seal of Republika Srpska with the description: the flag of Republika Srpska and the Cyrillic letters "РС" ("RS"), the red-blue-white tricolor are in the center of the seal, twisted with the golden Oak leaves, a traditional pre-Christian symbol sacred to most Slavs. On the edge of the seal there is an inscription Republika Srpska. The open crown of Kotromanić is shown in the bottom of the seal and the seal itself is topped with a heraldic royal crown.
The ministry of interior of Bosnia and Herzegovina had a few special forces that existed even before the war in Bosnia in 1992.
The Xoraxane 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.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a domestic prosecutor of the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina which includes international prosecutors. It was established in October 2002 by the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Law on the Court of BiH and promulgated on August 2002 by the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Bosnia and Herzegovina was a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus was confirmed to have reached Bosnia and Herzegovina on 5 March 2020, when a patient in Banja Luka, who had travelled to Italy, tested positive. Later on the same day, a second case, who was the son of the first case, was reported. On 21 March, the first death in the country from COVID-19 was announced in a hospital in Bihać. The patient was an elderly woman who had been hospitalized two days before.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has three governmental statistics offices, each one responsible for a different area of the government. One agency is in charge of whole country statistics, while the other two oversee statistics in BiH's constituent entities, the Republika Srpska and The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This system reflects strong decentralization in the region, and several independent reports have stated that this impedes an efficiently functioning government body. To this end, the three agencies still do not fully agree on several various statistical concepts and definitions. All three agencies were established in 2004 with the passage of the Law on Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Also, the Central Bank, though not a statistics agency on its own, is tasked with calculating yearly balances and preparing other financial statistics.
