The Discrimination of the “Others” in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina by introducing a complex power-sharing system between Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. However, the representation of micro-minorities, known as the “Others,” was ignored. This paper outlines both de jure discrimination of the Others in the Presidency and the House of Peoples, as well as the less frequently discussed de facto discrimination of the Others in entity institutions reserved for their representation. Utilizing comparative lessons, this paper offers two possible models to resolve the current discrimination of the Others: directly electing micro-minority representatives or streamlining federal features while abolishing ethnic quotas.  

Introduction

On June 25, 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) overturned the Kovačević v. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) ruling made in 2023, finding that Slaven Kovačević lacks a victim status (ECtHR 2025). At stake was whether BiH’s electoral system is discriminating against the Others’ active voting rights. In three earlier rulings the ECtHR found that the Others’ passive voting rights are violated within the current system. The Kovačević case revived a focus on the chronic issue that has been plaguing the country for the past three decades: the discrimination of the Others.

 

Exclusion amid inclusion in BiH

In BiH’s context the “Others” is a collective term for all citizens who do not belong to one of the three constituent peoples (Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs). In 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) ended a three-way war, which had claimed 100,000 lives. The DPA is a “classic example of consociational settlement” (Bose 2002, 216). The three constituent peoples share power in state institutions through ethnic quotas and mutual veto and are proportionality represented in the administration and armed forces. The administrative-territorial division of the country into two entities—the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) and the Bosniak-Croat Federation of BiH (FBiH) made up of six Bosniak-majority and four Croat-majority cantons—provides relative minorities (Croats and Serbs) with autonomy.

BiH’s complex power-sharing system discriminates against the Others, who make up 3.7% of the country’s population (Census 2013):

• Others are unable to run for the tripartite Presidency of BiH: a Serb is elected in RS and a Bosniak and a Croat are elected from the FBiH.
• Others are unable to serve in the House of Peoples, which is made up of five Bosniaks and five Croats elected by Bosniak and Croat representatives respectively in the House of Peoples of the FBiH, and five Serbs elected by the National Assembly of RS.
• Others are de facto unable to elect their representatives in the legislative bodies dedicated to their representation: the Others club in the House of Peoples of the FBiH and the Others club in the Council of Peoples of RS.

Such discrimination is not unique to BiH. Other power-sharing polities, such as Belgium, Burundi, Iraq, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and South Tyrol, have formal and informal limitations on political offices based on ethnicity, language, or religion. This phenomenon, in which micro-minorities (groups that constitute a miniscule proportion of the overall population) are excluded from power-sharing as larger minorities are included, is known as the ‘exclusion amid inclusion (EAI) dilemma’ (Agarin et al. 2018). Exclusion of micro-minorities from political offices and power-sharing itself is one of the most convincing critiques of consociationalism with an increasing focus in the literature (see Agarin & McCulloch 2020). It is also one of the most important political issues in BiH, as the inability (or unwillingness) of local politicians to resolve this issue has significantly contributed to BiH’s stalled path to EU accession.

Such limitations, however, are not unique to power-sharing polities and exist both formally and informally in other democracies. As Brendan O’Leary notes, he, as a naturalized US citizen, is not eligible to become a US President, while in the UK the head of state must be an Anglican (O’Leary 2021). The marginalization of minorities, to a varying degree, is a persistent issue within virtually any political system. Andreas Juon (2020) finds that micro-minorities in liberal consociations, where who shares power is determined by electoral results, tend to be more included than micro-minorities in corporate consociations, where groups who share power are predetermined based on ascriptive criteria. However, as Juon (2020) notes, referencing Agarin (2020), liberal consociations can shift the exclusion, narrowing the gap between minorities and micro-minorities while widening the gap between the majority and all minorities. Different political systems have varying degrees of inclusion and exclusion for different groups, but overall, micro-minorities tend to neither be at the table when power-sharing agreements are negotiated (Wise 2018), nor in the government when the decisions are made, facing both de jure and de facto discrimination.

 

De jure discrimination of the Others

Throughout the long history of power-sharing in BiH (see Keil 2016), the Others were often formally included: Jews had reserved seats in the governor’s advisory council (one out of six advisors) during the Ottoman era and in the parliament (two out of 92 MPs) during the Austro-Hungarian era, while in 1990 the Others had one reserved seat in the seven-member Presidency. It is historically unusual that the Others have been formally excluded from BiH’s power-sharing at Dayton. However, American and European lawyers who wrote the DPA included many human rights provisions in it. Norwegian lawyer Gro Nystuen, who worked on the DPA, called the primacy of the European Convention on Human Rights over all other laws “a silver bullet” that was meant to pave the road to reform in BiH through judicial review (Kennedy & Riga 2013, 175). Indeed, it was these constitutional provisions that allowed citizens of BiH to win five cases at the ECtHR.

The first and the most well-known ECtHR case is from 2009 when the Court ruled that Sejdić, a Roma, and Finci, a Jew, are discriminated against because they cannot run for the Presidency of BiH or be elected to the House of Peoples of BiH (Sejdić and Finci v. BiH 2009). Further, two rulings of the ECtHR confirmed that two other categories of Others are also discriminated along the same lines: people who self-identify only as citizens (Zornić v. BiH 2014) and Albanians (Šlaku v. BiH 2016). It is clear from these rulings that all Others in BiH face the same legal barriers preventing them from running for the Presidency and the House of Peoples.

The ECtHR found in two further cases that passive voting rights (the eligibility to be elected) of some constituent peoples are also violated: the inability of Bosniaks in the RS (Pilav v. BiH 2016) and Serbs in the FBiH (Pudarić v. BiH 2020) to run for the Presidency or to be elected to the House of Peoples. Bosniaks (and Croats) in the RS and Serbs in the FBiH are de facto (micro-)minorities who cannot run for above-mentioned offices due to a combination of ethnic and territorial requirements. All five ECtHR rulings are based on the violation of passive voting rights. In 2022 Slaven Kovačević claimed that his active voting rights (right to vote) are also violated. Kovačević claimed that due to the ethnic and territorial requirements, as a self-identified Other residing in the FBiH, he could not vote for his preferred candidates.

In this unusual case (Popović 2023), the ECtHR ruled that Kovačević abused the right of application and lacks victim status. While the rights of the Others in BiH are being violated both de jure and de facto, Kovačević’s claim is not without complications. He previously self-identified as an ethnic Croat to fill a seat in Sarajevo’s City Council, a fact that he hid from the ECtHR (Klix.ba 2024b). In BiH anyone can self-identify however they want for the purposes of elections and there is no legislation preventing candidates from changing their self-identification after the end of a four-year electoral cycle. Kovačević is just one of many politicians who strategically change their ethnic self-identification (see Kurtic 2022), a practice that is directly tied to the de facto discrimination that the Others face in BiH.

 

De facto discrimination of the Others

While the ECtHR rulings are well known in academic and policy circles, de facto discrimination of the Others in both entities is largely ignored. The Washington Agreement that established the FBiH in 1994 also created the Others club in the FBiH’s House of Peoples. Until 2001, when High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch imposed constitutional and electoral changes on the FBiH and RS, there was no equivalent to the House of Peoples in RS, while in the FBiH the Others club included Serbs who were not constituent people in that entity. From the 2002 elections until the 2022 elections, the Others club in the FBiH included seven representatives elected from five cantons, while five cantons did not elect any Others representatives. After High Representative Christian Schmidt imposed the electoral law reforms on the election night in 2022, among many other changes, the Others club was expanded from 7 to 11 representatives: two from Canton Sarajevo, which is home to 35% of all Others in the FBiH, and one representative each from the other nine cantons. These representatives are elected in every cantonal assembly among assembly members that self-identify as Others. In RS from 2002 until today, the Others club in the Council of Peoples have had four representatives elected by delegates in the National Assembly who self-identify as Others.

There are two issues with the current electoral system beyond the fact that representatives in entity and state upper chambers are indirectly elected. The first issue is that it is mathematically impossible for the Others, due to being a miniscule proportion of total population in most cantons and in the RS, to elect their representatives to the Others club. The Others are just 2.1% of the population in the RS and under 3% of population in six out of ten cantons in the FBiH (Census 2013). This means that even if all the Others supported one candidate in the six above-mentioned cantons, these candidates would still not be able to cross the 3% electoral threshold. Others’ representatives could not be elected to these six cantonal assemblies without the interference of Bosniak, Croat, or Serb voters. In four cantons the Others are more than 3% of population: they are 4.3% in Zenica-Doboj, 4.9% in Tuzla, 5.0% in Una-Sana, and 8.8% of population in Sarajevo canton.

Nevertheless, we must keep in mind that the Others in BiH are a highly heterogenous group and encompass six broad categories:

1) 17 traditional national minorities, the most numerous of which are the Roma with 12,583 members,

2) other ethnic groups, including Yugoslavs (2,570) and immigrants, the most numerous of whom are Chinese with 273 members,

3) people who self-identify as Bosnians and/or Herzegovinians, the most numerous of whom are Bosnians with 37,110 members,

4) people who identify religiously, the most numerous of whom are Muslims (12,121),

5) people who refuse to identify at all (27,055) or whose identification is unknown (6,460), and

6) people who give varied (and often humorous) answers to census takers, such as Jedis (76), Martians (63), and Vulcans (6) (Census 2013).

It is doubtful that such a heterogenous group of micro-minorities would support a single candidate, but at least it is statistically possible, however unlikely, for the Others to elect their representative by themselves in the four cantons in which they make up more than 3% of population. Christina Isabel Zuber (2015) hypothesizes that “coinciding ethnic parties” (for example, a hypothetical Roma party in BiH running for a seat reserved specifically for Roma) are expected to have a positive effect upon the willingness of representatives to act on behalf of that that specific minority group and promote their interests. Zuber (2015) further hypothesizes that multi-ethnic parties have a positive but weak effect on the willingness of representatives to act on behalf of a specific minority group, “partial ethnic” (such as a hypothetical Roma party in BiH whose representative is elected in a canton to represent all Others) would have a positive effect only for that minority (Roma) but not for other minorities (such as Albanians), and “other ethnic parties” (for example, a Bosniak ethnic party nominating a Roma candidate) would have a negative effect for that minority.

In other words, given the lack of truly multiethnic parties and ethnic parties representing specific subsets of the Others, micro-minorities in BiH are represented either by “other ethnic parties” such as SNSD in RS or SBiH in FBiH, or by nominally “multiethnic parties” such as DF and SDP, whose electorate is almost completely made up of voters from one of the three constituent peoples. In practice, local majorities (Serbs in the RS and Bosniaks in the FBiH, and, to a lesser degree, Croats in Croat-majority cantons) elect Others’ representatives in almost all cases (ICG 2012, 5).

The second issue is that many majority-group politicians self-identify opportunistically as Others, or as Bosniaks and Croats in the RS, and Croats and Serbs in the FBiH to fill ethnic quotas (Soldo 2018; Vrisak.info 2019; Klix.ba 2020; Vrisak.info 2021; Dnevnik.ba 2022; Kurtic 2022; Klix.ba 2023; Klix.ba 2024a). Not only most (if not all) Others’ representatives are not primarily elected by the Others voters, but often these representatives are, in fact, ethnically Bosniak, Croat, or Serb. The current system prevents the Others from electing their representatives to the Others club in entity parliaments. While resolving de jure discrimination of the Others through implementation of the ECtHR rulings is important and should be central to any future reform in BiH, resolving the much less discussed but structurally more impactful de facto discrimination of the Others would have an even greater impact on their political standing.

 

Possible reform models

While there are many potential solutions to resolving the current discrimination, I will outline two models, one inspired by reserved minority seats in three ex-Yugoslav cases, and one focused on streamlining BiH’s federal features and abolishing ethnic quotas in all institutions. Out of 151 seats in the Crotian parliament, eight are reserved for national minorities. Only registered members of national minorities can vote for their respective representatives (three Serbs, one Hungarian, and so on). In Slovenia, Hungarians and Italians have one reserved seat each out of 90 seats in the parliament, while in Kosovo, 20 of 120 seats are reserved for national minorities. Kosovo even invalidated mandates of Bosniak and Roma candidates in 2021 when it was discovered that Serb voters strategically usurped these seats (Isufi 2021). If combined with a rule from South Tyrol that one can change their self-identification for administrative purposes only once every decade, such a system would curb most of the impetus for politicians and voters to falsely self-identify as Others.

Introducing the Others club at the state level along with direct elections in which only Others can elect their representatives in the Others club in entities and at the state level would address both their de jure and de facto discrimination. Similar reforms could be undertaken for the three constituent peoples clubs to prevent usurpation of some Bosniak and Croat seats in RS by Serb parties, some Croat and Serb seat in the FBiH by Bosniak parties, and some Serb seats in the FBiH by Croat parties. The tripartite Presidency and the currently weak Council of Ministers could be replaced by a strong government directly elected by the D’Hondt method, akin to Northern Ireland’s system.

Another more comprehensive reform model (see Grbavac & Pepić 2022) would transform BiH’s byzantine political system, which hinges on its oft-abused ethnic quotas, into a simple(r) federation based on four (or more) federal units inspired by EU states such as Austria, Belgium, and Germany. Such a reform would abolish all ethnic quotas in administration and government, significantly reduce (by approximately 75%) the number of presidents, ministers, and MPs in BiH saving tens of millions of Euro in administrative costs, and, most importantly, allow everyone in the country to run for any office regardless of their ethnic or any other identity, implementing all the ECtHR rulings in the process. While imperfect, such a system would be an improvement over the current one, which puts (occasionally manipulated) ethnic self-identification at the center of all political life in BiH.

 

Conclusion

The power-sharing system in BiH has kept the peace for the past three decades at the expense of the rights of the Others. However, as outlined above, it is possible to design a power-sharing system that would be inclusive of micro-minorities while preserving the country’s power-sharing principles. To paraphrase the father of consociationalism Arend Lijphart, it would create a “kinder, gentler democracy” in BiH. The first step toward achieving this would be to reject the dual myths of the current form of corporate consociation as the only solution for constituent peoples to share power and majoritarian democracy as the only solution for eliminating the discrimination of Others.

 

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Wise, L. (2018) Setting aside the “others”: Exclusion amid inclusion of non-dominant minorities in peace agreements. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 24(3), pp.311-323.

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Zuber, C.I. (2015) Reserved seats, political parties, and minority representation. Ethnopolitics, 14(4), pp.390-403.

 

Further Reading

Agarin, T., McCulloch, A. & Murtagh, C. (2018) Others in deeply divided societies: A research agenda. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 24(3), pp.299-310.

Bose, S. (2017) Mostar as microcosm: Power-sharing in post-war Bosnia, in A. McCulloch and J. McGarry (eds) Power-Sharing: Empirical and Normative Challenges. United Kingdom: Routledge, pp. 189–210.

Zdeb, A. & Vermeersch, P. (2024) Horizontal redistribution and Roma inclusion in the Western Balkans: The “exclusion amid inclusion” dilemma. Social Inclusion, 12, Article 7608.