Jakob Finci (born 1 October 1943) is a prominent Bosnian Jew, former ambassador, and the current president of the Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Jakob Finci (born 1 October 1943) is a prominent Bosnian Jew, former ambassador, and the current president of the Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Finci was born to a Sephardic Jewish family on 1 October 1943 in the WWII-era Rab concentration camp.[ citation needed ]
A lawyer by training, Jakob Finci became member of the Presidency of the Jewish Community in Sarajevo in 1990, and in this capacity worked on humanitarian activities during the war in Sarajevo. In August 1995, Finci was elected president of the Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina.[ citation needed ] Finci is a founding member - and current president - of the Inter-Religious Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was established in 1997. Its membership reflects the country’s Islamic, Christian, and Jewish communities.
Finci was also president of the Constitutional Commission of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, director of the Civil Service Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as ambassador to Switzerland and non-resident ambassador to Liechtenstein. [1]
As a respected public figure, Finci was elected in 2000 to chair the national committee charged with the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission. Two years later, he was appointed Director of the Civil Service Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, his political ambitions were thwarted when he learned that, being Jewish, he was unable to run for president. [2]
Under the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia on 14 December 1995, membership to the parliament's upper house or presidency is reserved for one of the three ethnic groups: Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. Minorities, or "others" outside these constituent groups, such as Jews and Roma, can be Members of Parliament, but may not stand for higher political office. Jakob Finci and Dervo Sejdić, a prominent Bosnian Roma and member of Bosnia's Roma Council, appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that Bosnia's Constitution violates the European Convention on Human Rights. The judgement was handed down in their favor in September 2009. The Court found that certain provisions of the Bosnian constitution and election law discriminate against minority groups. However, six years after the ruling, the judgement has not been implemented yet by Bosnia and Herzegovina. [3] [4]
For his work, Jakob Finci has been decorated several times. These honors include the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as the American decoration First American Freedom in Richmond Virginia. He has also been named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur of the French Republic, and in 2009. he was proclaimed person of the year by Sarajevo's daily newspaper SAN, and man of the year for 2013 by the Bosnian daily Večernji list. Jakob Finci received International Primo Levi Prize in 2013 in Genoa, Italy.
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 Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the two entities within the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Republika Srpska. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of 10 autonomous cantons with their own governments and legislatures.
Dragan Čović is a Bosnian Croat politician who served as the 4th Croat member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002 to 2005 and from 2014 to 2018. He is the current president of the Croatian Democratic Union and is a member of the national House of Peoples.
The Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a three-member body which collectively serves as head of state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to Article V of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Presidency comprises three members: one Bosniak, one Serb, and one Croat. The Bosniak and Croat members are elected from a joint constituency in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whilst the Serb member is elected from voters in Republika Srpska.
The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the illustrated traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350. The Haggadah is owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. Its monetary value is undetermined, but a museum in Spain required that it be insured for $7 million before it could be transported to an exhibition there in 1992.
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 it 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.
The University of Sarajevo is a public university located in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the largest and oldest university in the country, as well as the oldest institution of tertiary learning in the former Yugoslavia, tracing its initial origins to 1537 as an Islamic madrasa.
Haris Silajdžić is a Bosnian politician and academic who served as the 5th Bosniak member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2006 to 2010. He was the 3rd Prime Minister of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1993 to 1996.
The history of Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina spans from the arrival of the first Bosnian Jews as a result of the Spanish Inquisition to the survival of the Bosnian Jews through the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Wars. Judaism and the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina has one of the oldest and most diverse histories in the former Yugoslav states, and is more than 500 years old, in terms of permanent settlement. Then a self-governing province of the Ottoman Empire, Bosnia was one of the few territories in Europe that welcomed Jews after their expulsion from Spain.
The Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the highest legal document of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The current Constitution is the Annex 4 of The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement, signed on 14 December 1995. The Constitution saw the end of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, however it has seen a large amount of criticism. Under the supervision of international community, an "arrangement of amendments" to the Constitution, agreed upon by leading political parties, was proposed for adoption in the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 2006, but it failed to get the approval of two-thirds of members in the House of Representatives.
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.
Bakir Izetbegović is a Bosnian politician who served as the 6th Bosniak member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2010 to 2018. He is the current president of the Party of Democratic Action and member of the national House of Peoples.
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.
Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina was a case decided by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in December 2009, in the first judgment finding a violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights taken in conjunction with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 thereof, with regard to the arrangements of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina in respect of the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 with regard to the constitutional arrangements on the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Dervo Sejdić is a prominent Bosnian Roma and vice president of NGO Kali Sara Roma Information Center.
Srđan Dizdarević was a Bosnian journalist, diplomat, and activist. Born into a prominent Bosniak political family of diplomats, Dizdarević graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Sarajevo in 1976 and entered politics. As a diplomat, he was the first secretary of the Embassy of Yugoslavia in Paris, and in 1991 he returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina. He also worked as the assistant editor-in-chief of the newspaper Oslobođenje and was a member of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1995, becoming the committee's president in 2005, serving until 2014. He died of severe pneumonia in 2016.
La Benevolencija is a Jewish humanitarian organization based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, the organization provided medical aid, food rations and educational services for the people trapped in the city.
Derviš Korkut was a Bosnian librarian, teacher, humanist and orientalist. He is the brother of the famous Bosnian translator of the Quran, Besim Korkut.
The human rights record of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been criticised over a number of years by intergovernmental organisations including the United Nations Human Rights Council, the European Court of Human Rights and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, as well as international and domestic non-governmental organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The government of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been criticised for ethnic and religious discrimination in its treatment of ethnic and religious minorities such as the Romani people and the Jewish people. The government has also been criticised for its treatment of Internally Displaced Persons following the Bosnian War and its failure to provide asylum seekers with resources such as food, shelter and medical assistance. According to BH Novinari, the Bosnian Journalists’ Association, freedom of the media is an issue in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with journalists facing attacks, threats and pressure from government. Human rights non-government organisations have also reported interference in their work from the government. The Bosnian government has been criticised by the European Union for its slow response to domestically prosecute war crimes from the Bosnian War following the closure of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in December 2017.
Svetozar Pudarić was a Bosnian Serb politician.
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