Bosnia and Herzegovina

On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, the Western Balkans Strategy Group, working under the auspices of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, calls on all governments of the Western Balkans to ensure appropriate commemoration of the victims of the genocide and to fully implement the United Nations General Assembly Resolution adopted on 23 May 2024.

But why should citizens even care about one more out of dozens of EU strategies?

The Western Balkans 6 Strategy Group, working under the auspices of the Heinrich Boll Stiftung, assesses the Open Balkan project as an enterprise that would adversely compete with the Berlin Process and, at the same time, lead regional integration towards an unacceptable and fragmented direction.

A hybrid two-days conference in Sarajevo created space for grassroots activists, academia, media professionals, policy-makers and others engaged in the region to discuss timely issues around migration and refugee policies in the region and on EU level.

The case of Zenica is a dramatic illustration of the consequences of the inability and unwillingness to respond to environmental concerns on the part of authorities, both domestic and international.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) cannot yet be defined as a new "stable democracy". Čović (HDZ B&H) is trying to make changes to the B&H Election Law before the 2022 General Elections, which is to ensure the "legitimate representation" of the constituent peoples. In this way, with "legitimate representatives", a way would be opened for the implementation of their own long-term strategy, which undoubtedly goes in the direction of rounding off the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is inhabited by majority Catholic population, i.e. the rebirth of the "extinguished" so-called Herzeg-Bosna, its full territorial and political autonomy and its eventual annexation to the Republic of Croatia.

Only when enlightened citizens realize that they have rights and that they can and must use them to change the system for the better, something will change.

The Dayton Agreement is centred around a warped, ethnicised view that accords a special role in the state to the three constitutional peoples – the Bosniaks, the Croats and the Serbs. The overall population, the citizens, the citoyens were effectively stripped of their powers; the individual person degraded – existing merely as an instrument of ethnic power cartels. Click here for download