According to legal expert Slavko Mitrović, Bosnia and Herzegovina, under its Constitution, possesses external sovereignty as a state, while nearly all internal sovereignty belongs to the entities that formed Bosnia and Herzegovina in Dayton.
“BiH is not a state in the constitutional and legal sense, as it is divided—not only by the inter-entity boundary line of territorial integrity based on the Geneva principle of 49 to 51 percent—but also by dual principles of constitutional structure, which clearly divide its sovereignty into external and internal, as defined by the BiH Constitution,” Mitrović wrote in a column for Glas Srpske.
He emphasized that the BiH Constitution stipulates that from the Dayton Agreement onward, the official name shall be “Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
“For something to be considered a state, its constitutional name must indicate its system of governance—like Republic of Serbia, Russian Federation, Federal Republic of Germany, Swiss Confederation, Kingdom of Norway, Principality of Monaco, or the United States of America. As it stands, ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina’ appears merely as a geographic space with internationally recognized borders,” Mitrović noted.
He reminded that the essence of the creation and survival of BiH rests solely on the existence of two entities and three constituent peoples.
“This affirms the principle of international law regarding the sovereignty of peoples, as contained in the UN Charter, but also in the two international covenants that are part of the BiH Constitution—the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—which state that all peoples have the right to self-determination,” Mitrović added.
On the basis of that right, he stated, peoples freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.
“In order to achieve their goals, all peoples may freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources, without prejudice to any obligations arising from international economic cooperation based on the principle of mutual benefit and international law,” Mitrović concluded.
Source: RTRS
