Bosnia and Hercegovina
Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Map of Bosnia
Bosnia and Herzegovina (officially Bosna i Hercegovina,
shortened to BiH, also in English variously
written Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosnia and Hercegovina,
Bosnia-Hercegovina) is a mountainous country in the
western Balkans.
Its capital is Sarajevo and it was
formerly one of the six federal
units constituting Yugoslavia.
The republic gained its independence in the Yugoslav
wars of the 1990s and due to the Dayton Accords, it
is currently administered by a
High Representative selected
by the UN Security Council.
It is also decentralized and administratively
divided into two entities, the Federation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika
Srpska.
Bosnia and Herzegovina themselves
are historical-geographic
regions which today have
no political status.
Details
Official name: Bosna i Hercegovina
Official languages: Bosnian,
Serbian, Croatian
Capital: Sarajevo
Area: 51,129 kmē
Population: 4,025,476 78/kmē
Independence: April 5, 1992
Currency: Convertible Mark (BHK)
Time zone: CEST (UTC+2)
- in summer CET (UTC+1)
National anthem: Intermeco
Internet TLD: .ba
Calling code: +387
History
The territories of today's
Bosnia and Herzegovina were
part of Illyria and later
part of the Roman Empire
(provinces Dalmatia and Pannonia).
After the fall of Rome, the
area was contested by the
Byzantine Empire and Rome's
successors in the West.
Slavs settled the region in
the 7th century.
The first mention of the term Bosnia
is in De Administrando Imperio,
a book by Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, Byzantine emperor
and historian.
The kingdoms of Serbia and Croatia split
control of Bosnia and Herzegovina
in the 9th century.
The 11th and 12th centuries
saw the rule of the region
by the kingdom of Hungary.
The medieval banate of Bosnia
gained autonomy by the end
of the 12th century, and
grew into an independent kingdom
in 1377 under king
Tvrtko Kotromanic.
Bosnia remained independent up until
1463, when Ottoman Turks conquered
the region and established
the Ottoman province of Bosnia.
In these times there
also lived a certain amount of
adherents to the so-called
Bosnian Church (variously referred
to as krstjani, bogumili,
etc) which belonged neither to
the Western nor to the
Eastern Christian churches.
During the four centuries
of Ottoman rule, many Bosnians
dropped their ties to
Christianity in favor of Islam,
including most of the
faithful of the Bosnian Church.
Bosnia was under Ottoman
rule until 1878, when it became a
colony under Austria-Hungary.
While those living in Bosnia were
from 1908 officially
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
South Slavs in Serbia
and elsewhere were calling for a
South Slav state; World
War I began with the assassination
in Sarajevo of Archduke
Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne, which was organized by Serb
nationalists - the assassin was
Gavrilo Princip, a member of the
"Black Hand" organization.
Following the war, Bosnia became
part of the South Slav
kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes (later renamed
to kingdom of Yugoslavia).
When Yugoslavia was invaded
in World War II, all of BH was ceded
to Nazi-puppet Croatia.
The Cold War saw the establishment
of the Communist Yugoslavia under Tito,
and the reestablishment of Bosnia
and Herzegovina as a republic
within its Ottoman borders.
The Bosnian-Herzegovinian declaration
of sovereignty in October of 1991,
was followed by a referendum for
independence from Yugoslavia in
February 1992 boycotted
by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Serbs.
Serbia and Bosnian Serbs responded
shortly thereafter with armed attacks
on Bosnian-Herzegovinian Croats
and Bosniaks aimed at
partitioning the republic along
ethnic lines and joining
Serb-held areas.
The UNPROFOR (UN Protection Force)
was deployed in Bosnia and
Herzegovina in mid-1992.
1992 and 1993 saw the greatest
bloodshed in Europe after 1945.
In March 1994, Bosniaks and
Croats reduced the
number of warring factions
from three to two by signing
an agreement creating a joint
Bosniak-Croat Federation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Each nation reported many
casualties in the three sided
conflict, in which the
Bosniaks reported the highest
number of deaths and casualties.
However, the only case officially
ruled by the U.N. Hague tribunal
as genocide was the Srebrenica massacre
of 1995.
At the end of the war more than 200,000 had
been killed and more than 2 million
people fled their
homes (including over 1 million to
neighboring nations
and the west).
On November 21, 1995, in Dayton, Ohio,
presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(Alija Izetbegovic),
Croatia (Franjo Tudman), and Serbia
(Slobodan Milosevic)
signed a peace agreement that brought
a halt to the
three years of war in the Republic
of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(the final agreement was signed
in Paris on 14 December 1995).
The Dayton Agreement succeeded in ending the
bloodshed in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
and it institutionalized
the division between the Bosnian-Herzegovinian
Muslim
and Croat entity - Federation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(51% of the territory), and
the Bosnian-Herzegovinian
Serb entity - Republika Srpska (49%).
The enforcement of the implementation
of the Dayton Agreement was through
a UN mandate using various multinational
forces: NATO-led
IFOR (Implementation Force), which
transitioned to the
SFOR (Stabilisation Force) the next
year, which in turn
transitioned to the EU-led EUFOR
at end of 2004.
The civil administration of Bosnia
and Herzegovina is headed
by the High Representative of the
international community.
Politics
The Chair of the Presidency of Bosnia and
Herzegovina rotates among three members (Bosniak, Serb,
Croat), each elected as the Chair for a 8-month term
within their 4-year term as a member.
The three members
of the Presidency are elected directly by the people
(Federation votes for the Bosniak/Croat, Republika Srpska
for the Serb).
The Chair of the Council of Ministers
is nominated by the Presidency and approved by the House
of Representatives.
He or she is then responsible for
appointing a Foreign Minister, Minister of Foreign Trade,
and others as appropriate.
The Parliamentary Assembly
is the lawmaking body in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It consists of two houses: the House of Peoples and the
House of Representatives.
The House of Peoples includes
15 delegates, two-thirds of which come from the Federation
(5 Croat and 5 Bosniaks) and one-third from the Republika
Srpska (5 Serbs).
The House of Representatives is composed
of 42 Members, two-thirds elected from the Federation
and one-third elected from the Republika Srpska.
The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina
is the supreme, final arbiter of legal matters.
It is composed
of nine members: four members are selected by the House
of Representatives of the Federation, two by the Assembly
of the Republika Srpska, and three by the President
of the European Court of Human Rights after consultation
with the Presidency.
Political divisions
Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into the Federation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska.
The district of Brcko is part of both entities.
The Federation is further divided into ten cantons (each
subdivided into municipalities): Una-Sana, Posavina, Tuzla,
Zenica-Doboj, Bosnian Podrinje, Central Bosnia,
Herzegovina-Neretva, West Herzegovina,
Sarajevo Canton 10.
The RS is divided
into municipalities which are grouped into seven regions:
Banja Luka, Bijeljina, Doboj, Foca, Sarajevo-Romanija (or
Sokolac), Trebinje Vlasenica.
Geography
Bosnia is located in the western Balkans,
bordering Croatia to the north
and south-west, and Serbia
and Montenegro to the east.
The country is mostly mountainous,
encompassing the central Dinaric Alps.
The northeastern
parts reach into the Pannonian
basin, while in the south
it almost borders the Adriatic.
The country has only
23 Km of coastline, around the town
of Neum in the Herzegovina-Neretva
Canton, although it's enclosed
within Croatian territory
and territorial waters.
The country's name comes from
the two regions Bosnia and
Herzegovina, which have a
very vaguely defined border
between them.
Bosnia occupies
roughly the northern two thirds
of the country, while
the southern third is Herzegovina.
The major cities
are the capital Sarajevo,
Banja Luka in the northwest
region known as Bosanska Krajina,
Tuzla in the northeast
and Mostar, the capital
of Herzegovina.
Economy
article: Economy of Bosnia and
Herzegovina Next to the
Republic of Macedonia, Bosnia
and Herzegovina was the
poorest republic in the old
Yugoslav Federation.
For the most part, agriculture
has been in private hands,
but farms have been small and
inefficient, and food
has traditionally been a net
import for the republic.
The centrally planned economy
has resulted in some legacies
in the economy. Industry is greatly
overstaffed, reflecting
the rigidity of the planned economy.
Under Josip Broz
Tito, military industries
were pushed in the republic;
Bosnia hosted a large share
of Yugoslavia's defense
plants.
Three years of interethnic strife destroyed
the economy and infrastructure in
Bosnia, causing unemployment
to soar and production
to plummet by 80%, as well as
causing the death in excess of
100 thousand people (according
to a report by Norwegian
News Agency NTB [1] based on
current information from
researchers at the International
Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at
the Hague, The Netherlands)
and displacing half of the
population.
With an uneasy peace in place, the economic
output has been recovering,
but GDP still remains below
the 1990 level.
Demographics
Large population migrations
durings the Yugoslav wars
in the 1990s have caused a
large demographic shift.
No census was held since 1991
and is not planned for the
near future due to political
disagreements.
Since censuses are the only statistical,
inclusive, and objective
way to analyze demographics,
almost all of the post-war
data is simply an estimate.
Most sources, however, estimate
the population at roughly
4 million (representing a
decrease of 350,000 since 1991).
According to the 1991 census,
Bosnia and Herzegovina
had a population of 4,354,911.
Ethnically, 43.7% were
Muslims (now almost all them
declare as Bosniaks), 31.3%
Serbs, and 17.3% Croats, with
5.5% declaring themselves
Yugoslavs.
There is a strong correlation
between ethnic
identity and religion: 88% of
Croats are Roman Catholics,
90% of Bosniaks practice Islam,
and 93% of Serbs are
Orthodox Christians. According
to 2000 data,
Bosnia and Herzegovina is ethnically
48% Bosniak, 37.1% Serb,
14.3% Croat, 0.6% other.
External links
This page was retrieved and condensed from
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnia_and_Herzegovina)
August 2005
All text is available under the terms of the
GNU Free Documentation License (see
Copyrights for details).
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