Bosnia Constitution Still ‘Outrageously’ Violates Minority Rights - HRW

The international rights watchdog HRW on Friday savaged Bosnian officials for their failure to reform a constitution that a key European Court of Human Rights ruling condemned as discriminatory exactly a decade ago.

The courtroom in the European Court of Human Rights. Photo: EPA-EFE/PATRICK SEEGER

A decade after the European Court of Human Rights first ruled that the Bosnian constitution violates the rights of minorities, Human Rights Watch, HRW, has said in a press release that Bosnia has done nothing to end second-class status for Jews, Roma, and other minorities.

“It’s outrageous that a European country has had a constitution that has been discriminating against its own citizens for 24 years,” the global rights watchdog’s senior legal adviser, Clive Baldwin – one of the lawyers who represented one of the applicants in the first European court case – said in the press release.

The ECHR has ruled in three subsequent cases that the Bosnian constitution violates citizens’ rights to run for public office, but none of these rulings has been respected, HRW said.

Baldwin urged the Bosnian authorities to stop prioritising the main ethnic groups’ interests over equal rights for all citizens and amend its discriminatory constitution.

The Bosnian constitution, drawn up at the end of the 1992-5 war in the country, stipulates that the three-member state presidency must consist of one Bosniak, one Croat and one Serb as representatives of the three main constituent groups.

Dervo Sejdic and Jakob Finci, citizens of Roma and Jewish origins, appealed to the ECHR because of this discrimination. In 2009, the court ruled in their favour. However, since then, every attempt to reform the constitution has failed.

HRW warned that an estimated 400,000 Bosnians, 12 per cent of the population, are currently barred from running for president or parliament because of their religion, ethnicity, or because of where they live. The constitution also bans people who do not wish to declare an ethnic identity from running for the highest office.

The international community, including the United States, Britain, Germany, and France, which were engaged in creating the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992-5 war, and the discriminatory constitution, have a responsibility to continue seeking solutions and press Bosnian officials to end this discrimination, HRW pointed out.

The European Union, it added, has a particular responsibility to press for reform, despite the stalled EU enlargement process that has kept Bosnia from moving toward membership.

“EU institutions and member states should signal to the Bosnian government that closer EU ties and cooperation with EU states depend on an end to discrimination in the constitution,” it said.

HRW also said that Bosnian officials should immediately resume work on creating a task force for constitutional reforms and involve the Council for National Minorities and relevant experts in putting human rights rulings into effect.

“European states and the US helped draft this constitution that makes thousands of Bosnians second-class citizens,” HRW adviser Baldwin said, and added: “Those same states should therefore help end this discrimination.”