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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 07/04
Implementing Equality: The "Constituent Peoples" Decision in Bosnia & Herzegovina
April 16, 2002
Abstract
In July 2000, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina made an historic ruling requiring the two entities, the Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska (RS), to amend their constitutions to ensure the full equality of the country's three "constituent peoples" throughout its territory.
This ruling offers a probably unrepeatable chance to push the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA) to their limits and to permit BiH to become a functional multinational state. As it stands, the Dayton model of three constituent peoples and two entities is inherently unstable. It can be pushed in one of two directions: towards recognising the right of the third and smallest people, the Croats, to have their own mini-state, or towards making both entities truly and effectively multinational. The "constituent peoples" decision represents the best means to reform the existing entities within the Dayton architecture and to move Bosnia in the second direction.
