How a peace treaty became Bosnia and Herzegovina's constitution

Why the constitution sits inside a peace treaty

The General Framework Agreement for Peace was agreed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, on 21 November 1995 and signed again in Paris on 14 December 1995. Its annexes run from military matters in Annex 1 to civilian implementation in Annex 10, and the constitution of the state is the fourth of them. Article XII of that annex says it enters into force "upon signature of the General Framework Agreement as a constitutional act amending and superseding the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina". Three short declarations follow the text, one for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one for the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and one for Republika Srpska, each approving it.

The preamble names its authors as "Bosniacs, Croats, and Serbs, as constituent peoples (along with Others), and citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina". Those two categories, peoples and citizens, run through every article that follows, and most of the country's constitutional arguments since 1995 have been about which of them a given office belongs to.

The Constitutional Court was asked in October 1997 to review whether the peace agreement itself was compatible with the constitution. It declined, reasoning that it had been created by the constitution to uphold that text, and that because the constitution was adopted as Annex IV of the agreement "there cannot be a conflict or a possibility for controversy between this Agreement and the Constitution". The court has since used the other annexes as a direct basis for its analysis, which treats the whole peace settlement as a single body of law with the constitution as one part of it. The 1997 decision left aside what the Dayton Agreement's Wikipedia article calls "the controversial questions of the legality of the process" by which the new constitution replaced the old one.

The text names no official language. The agreement was written in four versions, Bosnian, Croatian, English and Serbian, and in 2000 the Constitutional Court confirmed the equal status of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian when it ruled incompatible the Entity constitutions that recognised only some of them. The same text makes the European Convention on Human Rights directly applicable, with priority over all other law, and it lists fifteen further human rights agreements the state must join or remain party to.

Amendment is by decision of the Parliamentary Assembly, including a two-thirds majority of those present and voting in the House of Representatives. One limit sits above that procedure: no amendment may remove or reduce the rights in Article II, and the paragraph that says so may itself never be altered.

How the constitution counts peoples and territory

Almost every office in the state is allotted by two criteria, often both at once: the constituent people a holder belongs to and the Entity the holder is elected from.

The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina covers 51% of the country's area and Republika Srpska 49%. The two territories were based largely on the lines the warring sides held in 1995. The constitution assigns institutions to them in thirds: two thirds of the House of Representatives and of the House of Peoples come from the Federation, as do at most two thirds of the ministers and two thirds of the ambassadors. The Federation also provides two thirds of the revenue for the state budget and Republika Srpska one third, except where the Parliamentary Assembly raises revenue itself.

Inside that territorial split sits the ethnic one. The Presidency must consist of one Bosniak, one Croat and one Serb. The House of Peoples holds five of each. Deputy ministers may not belong to the same constituent people as their ministers, and officials appointed to state institutions must be "generally representative of the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina". The Others of the preamble, citizens who declare none of the three identities, have no seat reserved in either the Presidency or the state House of Peoples as Annex 4 writes them.

Because so many of these rules depend on proportions, the census is itself contested. No census was held between 1991 and 2013, a gap Wikipedia's country article attributes to political disagreement, and the one taken in October 2013 remains disputed. It recorded 3,531,159 people, of whom 50.1% declared as Bosniaks, 30.8% as Serbs and 15.5% as Croats. The Republika Srpska statistical office and Bosnian Serb politicians contest the results because they include residents who are not permanently present, and Eurostat concluded in May 2016 that the methodology followed international recommendations.

How three members share one presidency

The Presidency is the collective head of state. Voters in the Federation elect the Bosniak and the Croat member and voters in Republika Srpska elect the Serb, each voter filling one seat only, so a Serb living in the Federation votes for the Bosniak or the Croat seat and a Bosniak living in Republika Srpska votes for the Serb one. The first members served two years; later terms are four, and members may serve two terms in a row and must then wait four years before standing again.

The chair of the Presidency rotates among the three members every eight months within the four-year term. The body conducts foreign policy, appoints ambassadors, proposes the annual budget on the recommendation of the Council of Ministers and represents the state in international organisations. Each member also holds civilian command authority over the armed forces, which since 2005 have been a single force formed by merging the army of the Federation with the army of Republika Srpska.

The Presidency is meant to decide by consensus, and two members may adopt a decision once all efforts at consensus have failed. The third then has a protection. Within three days he may declare the decision "destructive of a vital interest of the Entity" he was elected from. The declaration goes to the National Assembly of Republika Srpska if the Serb member made it, or to the Bosniak or Croat delegates of the Federation's House of Peoples if one of the other two did, and if two thirds of that body confirm it within ten days the decision does not take effect.

The chair of the Council of Ministers is nominated by the Presidency and approved by the House of Representatives, and nominates the ministers in turn. The Council carries out state policy in the fields the constitution gives the state, and it must resign on a vote of no confidence by the Parliamentary Assembly.

Why a law needs votes from both Entities

All legislation requires the approval of both chambers of the Parliamentary Assembly, and each chamber elects a Bosniak, a Croat and a Serb as its chair and deputy chairs, with the chair rotating among them. The Inter-Parliamentary Union records the speakership of the House of Representatives rotating every eight months in the term that began in December 2022.

How the two chambers are filled

The House of Representatives has 42 members elected directly by proportional representation for four years, 28 from the Federation and 14 from Republika Srpska. For the 2010 general election the Federation elected 21 of its members in five multi-member constituencies and allotted seven by compensatory lists, and Republika Srpska elected nine in three constituencies and allotted five the same way. The state's first permanent election law dates from 2001; the first elections under the constitution were held under Annex 3 of the peace agreement and organised by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1996.

The election law requires every candidate list to give each sex at least 40% of places. The chamber that sat after the 2022 election held eight women among its 42 members, 19.0% as the IPU recorded it in December 2022, against twelve women in September 1998 and three in November 2000. The IPU put the average age of members at 52.7 in December 2022.

The House of Peoples is indirect. Its fifteen delegates serve two-year terms, the Bosniak and Croat delegates chosen by their counterparts in the Federation's own House of Peoples and the Serb delegates by the National Assembly of Republika Srpska. Nine delegates form a quorum only if at least three of each people are present.

How the entity vote and the veto work

A majority of those present carries a decision in either chamber, and the constitution then adds a territorial test. Members are to make "their best efforts" to see that the majority includes a third of the votes from each Entity. If it does not, the chair and deputy chairs meet as a commission and have three days to obtain approval. If they fail, the decision passes by a simple majority, provided the votes against do not include two thirds or more of the members elected from either Entity. Fourteen of the 42 seats in the lower house belong to Republika Srpska, so once the chairs' commission has failed, ten of its members voting together are enough to stop a bill, and nineteen of the Federation's 28.

The second test is ethnic and sits in the House of Peoples. A majority of the Bosniak, the Croat or the Serb delegates may declare a proposed decision "destructive of a vital interest" of their people. From that point it needs a majority of each of the three groups of delegates present and voting. If a majority of another group objects to the declaration, a joint commission of one delegate from each people has five days to settle it, and after that the Constitutional Court reviews the matter for procedural regularity.

What the Entities and cantons decide for themselves

The state's own list of powers in Article III is short: foreign policy, foreign trade and customs, monetary policy, immigration and asylum, the finances of state institutions, international and inter-Entity law enforcement, common communications, inter-Entity transport and air traffic control. "All governmental functions and powers not expressly assigned" to the state belong to the Entities. Each Entity has its own constitution, government, legislature and supreme court, and each may establish "special parallel relationships with neighboring states" provided they respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the whole.

The two Entities are built differently. The Federation is divided into ten cantons, each with its own government and its own rules on matters such as business regulation, and the Federation court system runs ten cantonal courts. Republika Srpska has no cantons and seven district courts. Below both sit the municipalities, counted in the State Department's 2025 investment climate statement as 143, with 80 in the Federation and 63 in Republika Srpska; Wikipedia's country article gives 79 and 64. Four places, Banja Luka, Mostar, Sarajevo and East Sarajevo, hold the status of city.

The Brčko District in the north was created in 2000 from land belonging to both Entities. It belongs to both and is governed by neither, and at elections its voters choose whether to take part in the Federation's contests or those of Republika Srpska. Bosnia and Herzegovina: history sets out how the arbitration that produced it was decided.

Part of the Entities' jurisdiction has since been transferred to new state institutions: a ministry of defence formed in 2004, the unified armed forces, a security ministry, a state court and an indirect taxation service. The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina opened a War Crimes Chamber in January 2005. In July 2024 the Constitutional Court ruled in two cases that the Entities may not dispose of state property in any form, including title, lease, concession or temporary use. The United States State Department's 2025 statement describes moves by Republika Srpska to take control of state property, and repeated threats of secession, as having raised tensions.

In February 2014 workers from privatised and bankrupt factories in Tuzla began protests against the Federation government that spread to Sarajevo, Zenica, Mostar, Bihać and Brčko, with hundreds injured. Unrest on the same scale did not occur in Republika Srpska. The Economist Intelligence Unit classed the country as a "hybrid regime" in 2022.

Which offices the peace agreement gave to foreigners

Several seats inside the state's own institutions were filled from outside it by design. Three of the nine judges of the Constitutional Court are chosen by the President of the European Court of Human Rights after consultation with the Presidency, and they may not be citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina or of any neighbouring state. The constitution allows the Parliamentary Assembly to provide by law for a different method of selecting those three once five years had passed from the first appointments.

The Central Bank is the sole authority for issuing currency and for monetary policy. For its first six years the constitution barred it from extending credit by creating money, so that it operated as a currency board, and its first governor was appointed by the International Monetary Fund, again from outside the country and its neighbours, with a tie-breaking vote on the board. Later boards are five people appointed by the Presidency, who choose a governor from among themselves. The convertible mark it issues is pegged to the euro, and Britannica notes that the euro also circulates as semi-official legal tender.

An outside court also decides who may stand for office. Article IX bars from any elective or appointive post a person serving a sentence imposed by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, or under its indictment and refusing an order to appear, and Article II obliges every authority to give that tribunal unrestricted access. A Human Rights Chamber set up under Annex 6 of the peace agreement sat from March 1996 to 31 December 2003.

How the High Representative acquired the Bonn powers

The peace agreement created the Office of the High Representative to oversee the civilian side of its implementation. The office is appointed through the Peace Implementation Council, whose Steering Board brings together Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the presidency of the European Union, the European Commission and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. In 1997 the board met monthly to give the High Representative political guidance.

The powers now known by the name of the city came from the council's meeting in Bonn in December 1997. Its conclusions welcomed the High Representative's intention to use "his final authority in theatre" to make binding decisions on the timing and chairing of meetings of the common institutions, on "interim measures to take effect when parties are unable to reach agreement", and on measures against office-holders found to be in breach of commitments under the agreement. The same conclusions set deadlines for a citizenship law, a law on the Council of Ministers and designs for a common currency, and they invited the High Representative to settle a flag if the parties had not agreed on one by 31 December 1997.

They had not. The Parliamentary Assembly failed on 3 February 1998 to adopt any of three designs put to it by a commission the High Representative had appointed, and the next day the High Representative, Carlos Westendorp, announced the design with the stars and the yellow triangle as the state flag. A spokesman for his office, Duncan Bullivant, told the press on 4 February 1998 that the triangle stood for the three constituent peoples.

The powers have been used to remove elected and appointed officials, including judges, local officials and members of parliament. Wikipedia's country article records criticism of the methods as undemocratic and a comparison of the office to a viceroy. The Peace Implementation Council has set criteria for closing the office, and Wikipedia's article on Bosnian politics records two of five as met, to be sustained while the other three are pursued.

How Bosnia and Herzegovina seeks European and Atlantic membership

The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was admitted to the United Nations on 22 May 1992, and the Dayton constitution kept that seat by continuing the same legal personality under the shorter name. The state joined the Council of Europe on 24 April 2002, and it has been a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union since 1994.

Wikipedia's country article lists integration with the European Union among the state's main political objectives. It began the Stabilisation and Association Process in 2007 and became a candidate country by decision of the European Council on 15 December 2022. In March 2024 the European Council approved the opening of accession negotiations on condition that further steps were met. The State Department's 2025 statement records that the decision "was widely acknowledged as a geopolitical one rather than a reflection of significant progress on necessary reforms", and it notes that the country is aligning its legislation with the acquis while accession talks wait on those steps.

Bosnia and Herzegovina received a Membership Action Plan from NATO on 23 April 2010, and NATO approved the plan in December 2018. The state is outside the World Trade Organization and is negotiating to join; the working party on its accession has not met since 2018.

Foreign policy is in the hands of a three-member Presidency in which each member can refer a decision to the representatives of his own Entity or people, so every one of these commitments has been made under the same double key that governs a budget or a law.