Босния және Герцеговина Федерациясы: Саяси құрылым және тарихы

the political entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina
Political entity of the sovereign country of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the two entities composing Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Republika Srpska. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of ten autonomous cantons with their own governments and legislatures. The Federation was created by the 1994 Washington Agreement, which ended the Croat–Bosniak War within the Bosnian War, and established a constituent assembly that continued its work until October 1996. The Federation has a capital, government, president, parliament, customs and police departments and two postal systems. It occupies about half of the land of Bosnia and Herzegovina. From 1996 until 2005 it had its own army, the Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, later merged in the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The capital and largest city is Sarajevo with 275,524 inhabitants.

The basis for the creation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was laid down by the Washington Agreement of March 1994. Under the agreement, the combined territory held by the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian Defence Council forces was to be divided into ten autonomous cantons along the lines of the Vance Owen plan. The cantonal system was selected to prevent dominance of one ethnic group over another. However, much of the territory Croats and Bosniaks claimed for their Federation was at that point still controlled by the Bosnian Serbs. The Washington Agreement was implemented during the spring of 1994, by convoking a Constitutional Assembly, which on 24 June adopted and proclaimed the Constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1995, Bosniak forces and Bosnian Croat forces of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina defeated forces of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, and this territory was added to the federation (Una Sana Canton).

By the Dayton Agreement of 1995 that ended the four year war, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was defined as one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, comprising 51% of country's area, alongside Republika Srpska. Cantons and federal structure were built rather slowly after the war. Separatist Croat Herzeg Bosnia institutions existed and functioned parallel to Federation ones up until 1996–97, when they were phased out. On 8 March 2000, the Brčko District was formed as an autonomous district within Bosnia and Herzegovina and it was created from part of the territory of both Bosnian entities. Brčko District is now a condominium that belongs to both entities. In 2001–2002, the Office of the High Representative (OHR) imposed amendments to the Federation's Constitution and its electoral law, in compliance with the decisions of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the political equality of the three constituent peoples (U 5/98). This triggered the grievances of Bosnian Croats, who claimed they were deprived of their rights to representation as Bosniaks had come to control the majority in the upper house as well. Dissatisfied Croat politicians set up a separate Croatian National Assembly, held a referendum parallel to the elections and proclaimed their self rule in Croat majority areas in the Federation. Their attempts ended shortly after a crackdown by SFOR and legal proceedings. Dissatisfied with the representation of Croats in the Federation, Croat political parties insist on creating a Croat majority federal unit instead of several cantons. SDA and other Bosniak parties strongly oppose this. In September 2010, the International Crisis Group warned that "disputes among and between Bosniak and Croat leaders and a dysfunctional administrative system have paralyzed decision making, put the entity on the verge of bankruptcy and triggered social unrest". In 2010–14 the Federation's Government was formed by SDP without the consent of major Croat political parties, leading to a political crisis. In parallel to EU facilitated talks on the Sejdic Finci issue at State level, in February 2013 the US embassy supported an expert working group which presented its 188 recommendations to the FBIH House of Representatives in 2013, aiming to address the costly and complex governance structures with overlapping competences between the Federation, the Cantons and the municipalities as currently entailed in the Federation Constitution. The initiative was finally not adopted by the Parliament. Following an appeal by HDZ BiH Božo Ljubić, in December 2016 the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina abolished the electoral formula for the indirect election of the Federation House of People, stating that it did not guarantee the legitimate representation of constituent peoples. Notably, the ruling did not concur with an amicus curiae opinion of the Venice Commission on the same matter. Lacking legislative amendments to revise the Election Law, in Summer 2018 the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina provisionally enacted a new formula for the composition of the House of People, based on the minimal representation formula (one deputy per each constituent people per each canton) and on the 2013 census. In 2022, the High Representative imposed amendments to the federal Constitution and the Election Law, implementing the Ljubic verdict. The changes also reconstructed the original balance of power between Croats and Bosniaks in the Federation, as envisioned in Washington Agreement. In 2023, the High Representative suspended the federal Constitution for one day in order to impose a new government. This created a huge scandal and political crisis. Some see this as an act of "treason".