Freedom in the World 2001 - Bosnia and Herzegovina

2001 Scores

Status: Partly Free
Freedom Rating: 4.5
Civil Liberties: 4
Political Rights: 5

Ratings Change

Bosnia-Herzegovina's civil liberties rating changed from 5 to 4 because of a modest improvement in the situation for religious minorities and small increases in refugee returns.

Overview

The year 2000 was one of elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In April, local municipal elections were held for the second time in the postwar period, and in November, statewide elections for various institutions were held for the third time since the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA) were signed in 1995. In general, although the more vehemently nationalist parties seemed to be losing some ground, the elections held in 2000 showed that nationalism is still far from a spent force in the country.

Immediately upon being recognized as an independent state in April 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina was plunged into a 43-month-long civil war. In November 1995, the DPA, an internationally sponsored peace agreement, brought an end to the fighting by creating a very loosely knit state composed of the Bosniac-Croat "Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina" and the Republika Srpska (RS). The DPA also gave the international community a very powerful role in running post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina. This included the deployment of a NATO-led peacekeeping force, and a leading role for international civilian agencies such as the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In 1997, the international High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina was given the authority to impose laws on the country, and to dismiss publicly elected officials from office. Despite the efforts of the international community, however, most aspects of political, social, and economic life in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina are still divided along ethnic lines.

Bosnia's April municipal elections produced mixed results. On one hand, international officials claim that before the elections, nationalist parties controlled 124 out of 146 municipalities in the country. After the elections, this number fell to 76. The number of votes gained by non-nationalist parties such as the Social-Democratic Party of Bosnia-Herzegovina (SDP) increased from 187,000 in 1997 to 280,000 in 2000. These figures, however, have to be measured against the fact that the 2000 municipal elections also witnessed a dramatic decline in the number of refugees and displaced persons registering to vote in their prewar homes. By one estimate, the number of Bosniac voters choosing to vote in the RS fell by half between the 1997 and 2000 elections. This suggests that the vast majority of people driven from their homes during the war have given up hope on ever returning.

In the statewide elections held on November 11, nationalist parties did unexpectedly well, especially among Croat and Serb voters. Nevertheless, in the Bosnia-wide House of Representatives (one house in the two-chamber Parliamentary Assembly), the three main nationalist parties that had dominated Bosnian politics since 1990 – the Bosniac Party of Democratic Action (SDA), the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ), and the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) – saw their total of 27 seats in the 42-member chamber fall to 19 seats. The SDA and HDZ also lost their majority in the Bosniac-Croat Federation parliament. In the RS, the SDS candidate won the race for the presidency, defeating the international community's favored candidate, RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, and the SDS became the strongest single party in the RS National Assembly.

On the same day that the November elections were held, the HDZ organized an unofficial referendum for Croat voters, essentially asking them if they supported the creation of a third entity in Bosnia. The measure passed by an overwhelming margin, showing that large segments of Bosnia's population remain unhappy with the DPA. To further stress this point, in the wake of the referendum's passing, HDZ President Ante Jelavic declared that as far as the Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina were concerned, the mission of the OHR and the OSCE had come to an end.

In October, long-time Bosniac leader Alija Izetbegovic retired from public office. Thus, by the end of 2000, the three politicians (Izetbegovic, Croatia's Tudjman, and Serbia's Milosevic) who had led their peoples to war, had signed the DPA, and had in so many ways obstructed the implementation of the peace process were no longer on the scene. Despite the improvement in Bosnia's international environment, however, at the end of 2000 it remained unclear whether the country enjoyed the internal domestic consensus needed to make the DPA a success.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

The DPA authorized the OSCE to organize and monitor elections at all levels of government in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Elections throughout the postwar period have regularly been certified "free and fair," although the parties that held power from 1990 to 1998 enjoyed many advantages in terms of access to state-owned media and the ability to divert government funds into their electoral coffers. Over the past several years, international officials have been trying to level the electoral playing field. On February 18, 2000, the OSCE adopted a rule prohibiting officials from serving in both governmental positions and public enterprises. By May, 136 officials had resigned their positions in public enterprises, while 7 officials chose to resign their elective office. Electoral reforms introduced in 2000 specified new rules on campaign financing (including spending ceilings per voter per electoral campaign), regulations forcing parties to reveal their financial records, and the introduction of a preferential voting system in the RS in an effort to bring more moderate politicians to power.

In general, voters are allowed to freely elect their representatives and are allowed to form political parties insofar as the programs of those parties are not deemed to be at odds with the DPA. The international High Representative, however, has the authority to remove publicly elected officials from office. From January to November 2000, the current High Representative used these powers to remove more than 30 officials. Similarly, the inability of Bosniacs, Croats, and Serbs to agree to anything of substance required the High Representative to impose laws and regulations on the country regarding a wide variety of issues, ranging from judicial reform, passports, and the national anthem, to a law on metrology.

The situation for the press in Bosnia showed some minimal improvements in 2000. Most notably, independent media appeared for the first time in Croat-populated areas (the so-called Herceg-Bosna), where previously the media scene was dominated by pro-HDZ publications and/or publications from Croatia proper. Nevertheless, the press still remains subject to various forms of harassment. A survey of journalists carried out in 2000 showed that 62 percent of those surveyed had personally experienced intimidation and interference with their work. In June, Federation financial police raided the offices of the Sarajevo daily newspaper Dnevni Avaz. Although Dnevni Avaz had previously been considered a pro-SDA newspaper, it adopted a more independent editorial position during the first half of the year, and high-ranking SDA officials blamed the paper for the SDA's poor showing in the April municipal elections.

Freedom of religion in Bosnia showed some improvement in 2000. Individuals living in areas dominated by members of their own ethnic group do not experience any limitations on their religious rights; however, the same does not hold true for individuals who are members of a local ethnic minority. In this sense, religious intolerance is often a reflection of the prevailing atmosphere of intolerance for ethnic minorities in various parts of the country, rather than religious persecution per se. All three major religious organizations in the country – Islamic, Catholic, and Orthodox – have claims against the government for property confiscated during the Communist period. In October 2000, the first mosque to be built in the RS in the postwar period was dedicated outside of Prijedor, and in November, Banja Luka authorities granted permission for the historic Ferhadija mosque (destroyed in 1993) to be rebuilt.

Citizens enjoy the right to freedom of assembly, and demonstrations and other forms of public discussion are frequent occurrences. Free trade unions exist and are very active. The judiciary in Bosnia is considered to be under the influence of the nationalist parties who had an exclusive control over the various ethnic and regional governments in the country from 1990-97. In 1997, the OHR and the OSCE began a major judicial reform campaign aimed at improving the professionalism and independence of the judiciary.

Freedom of movement and the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes continued to show very modest improvements in 2000. A hopeful development was the beginning of returns to areas in the eastern RS where some of the worst instances of forced expulsions had occurred, such as around the town of Foca/Srbinje. Overall, so-called minority returns, that is, those in which the returnee goes to an area in which she or he is not a member of the local ethnic majority, rose to 32,000 from January to September 2000, triple the number of the same period in 1999. At this rate, however, it would take some 20 years for all of the country's refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes. Further complicating the return of refugees and displaced persons is a complex system of property rights legislation, which often makes it difficult for individuals to reclaim the property they owned or had rights to before 1992. Local officials have been notably reluctant to engage in meaningful reforms in this area, forcing the High Representative to impose, annul, or amend numerous pieces of property legislation over the course of the year.

Legally, women are entitled to full equality with men. In practical terms, however, women are significantly underrepresented in politics and government. To compensate for the absence of women in public life, the OSCE has instituted a regulation forcing political parties to list 3 women among the top 10 names on the candidate's lists. In the postwar period, women have often been discriminated against in the workplace in favor of demobilized soldiers.