What they should be doing is working through the domestic institutions that exist to resolve their differences. For example, they should be going to the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia Herzegovina and they should be going to the Constitutional Court of Bosnia Herzegovina and resolving their differences that way.
What ended up happening now with the latest referendum threat is that they went to the European Union and the European Union was able to start a dialogue between all the sides to talk about judiciary reform. I hope that the EU will continue with that kind of policy. On the more war-related issues, I would say that obviously RS should stop having big commemorative events or setting up statues that herald what happened during the war, which for them might be victories, but for the rest of the population, for the Bosniak population, is still very traumatic.
On the other hand, they should support the more positive type of events: actions and events that can reestablish the historical truth of what happened during the war. It is highly unlikely that the RS will secede or that the Bosniaks will attempt to eliminate it, but if its Serb leaders continue driving every conflict with Sarajevo to the brink, as they have done repeatedly to date, they risk disaster.
RS also suffers from its own internal problems, notably a culture of impunity for political and economic elites and a lingering odour of wartime atrocities. Its leadership, especially its president, Milorad Dodik, needs to compromise with Sarajevo on state building and implement urgent entity-level reforms. The RS threatened a referendum early in that could have provided support for a Serb walkout of Bosnian institutions and brought BiH back to the brink of war.
The situation was defused in June, when the European Union EU offered a dialogue process on the judiciary, whose reform the RS was demanding. The process will be long and painstaking, but RS can achieve effective change only by working through the BiH Parliamentary Assembly and Constitutional Court.
The international community has wrestled with RS for years. Given a free choice, many in the entity would prefer independence, but this is unacceptable to the rest of Bosnia and the international community. The RS is too weak to fight its way to independence and would not achieve international recognition as a state. Its leaders reject much of the internationally-led state-building project that has given Bosnia its current administrative structure.
Some Bosniak and international observers believe international will has flagged, giving Serbs room to sabotage the state, while other international and Serb observers argue international interventions keep Serbs in a bunker mentality.
Bosniaks, Croats and the international community have little choice but to engage with RS elites, especially President Dodik. He is the most populist and difficult leader the RS has had for years, but he and his party have strong support. The RS is divided into east-west halves. The SNSD appears invincible in the politically and economically more influential western portion, controlling every municipality either directly or in coalition with a smaller party, and is encroaching on the traditional eastern stronghold of the Serb Democratic Party Srpska demokratska stranka, SDS.
Many eastern municipalities, especially those run by the opposition, feel deprived and are slowly beginning to seek greater economic and political decentralisation, but this takes a back seat to concerns about protecting RS as a whole.
Corruption and weak rule of law undermine economic growth. The RS, like the rest of Bosnia, is only slowly emerging from the recession that resulted from the global financial crisis.
Privatisation of RS Telecom and an oil refinery gave the RS a cash bonanza in , creating a false glow of prosperity. But these funds have done little to further growth, and recent tax increases and expected cuts in social services may breed social dissatisfaction.
Many Serbs believe that they are asked to shoulder all blame for the war, accused of being occupiers and aggressors. Serbs worry that the RS will be taken away from them if they admit they carried out a genocide at Srebrenica. But this is an empty fear.
Rather, RS elites should acknowledge the responsibility of their wartime leaders and support reconciliation efforts so as to become more respected and trusted authorities throughout Bosnia. This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Review our privacy policy for more details. Andes Central America. Overkill: Reforming the Legal Basis for the U. War on Terror. Serbs, after years of attacking the Dayton Accords, have grudginly acknowledged Dayton's entity-based structures and weak central state.
But, over the years, they have sought to roll back reforms designed to make Dayton work and advance Bosnia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations, arguing that such reforms were not explicitly provided for in Dayton. Many Serbs would prefer the dissolution of Bosnia in favor of the independence of the RS. Even the most enlightened Bosnian Serbs continue to demand that the RS's status remains unchanged, i.
The Republika Srpska has a centralized government and is divided directly into 62 municipalities. The official language is Serbian. It covers an area of The territory is grouped in two main regions, North-Western part of Srpska consisting of Banja Luka Krajina region and Posavina region , and Eastern part of Srpska consisting of Semberija and Majevica region, Drina region, Sarajevo and Romanija region and Herzegovina region.
The climate in general is the continental one with long snowy winters and dry hot summers, with the exception to the Herzegovina region which enjoys the benefits of the Mediterranean climate. Republika Srpska leaders continue to challenge the Dayton Agreement with rhetoric that advocates Republika Srpska independence or secession for the Republika Srpska. State-level institutions are very limited in their capacities, and there are only a few such institutions that have national-level competencies and authorities that merit support including the Ministry of Justice and State Parliament.
As well, competencies shared between the state and Entities are configured such that there are inadequate mechanisms to ensure Entity compliance with state or joint policy. Bosnia has been heading in the wrong direction since There has been a sharp and dangerous rise in nationalist rhetoric, reforms have stalled in some cases there has been backsliding , and Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats have laid out sharply different visions of Bosnia's future as a state.
By far the biggest challenge are the Serbs, who have no incentive to engage constructively, and who, without serious pressure or even the threat of sanctions, remain unyieldingly intransigent. By the greatest danger was efforts by the RS to de-legitimize and undermine the state.
At a minimum, the aim appeared to be to restore to the RS the level of autonomy it enjoyed at the end of the war, which would ultimately result in the collapse of the BiH state. The relative immaturity of Bosnia's democracy, exacerbated by Dodik's almost total control of the RS media, complicates efforts to promote needed reforms.
The conclusions adopted by the Republika Srpska National Assembly in presented a fundamental challenge to the Dayton Accords, and constituted the most serious of a disturbing pattern of actions by the Republika Srpska in violation of this agreement. These actions are destabilizing to the overall situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and could paralyze the functioning of its state institutions.
In early , when Dodic was prime minister, the parliament of the Serb Republic adopted a resolution, which said that Bosnian Serbs could leave Bosnia and Herzegovina if the majority of the UN member states and the EU member states acknowledge Kosovo's independence.
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