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IV473 - June 2014

Latest update : 10 July 2014.

Footnotes

[1This statement originally appeared on Jadaliyya in Arabic http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/inde... and Ali Issa translated it into English.

[2Since the Dayton Peace Accords (1995), the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been divided into autonomous regional authorities: the Republika Srpska (Serb Republic), the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosniak and Croat) and the Brcko District (under the joint jurisdiction of the first two entities, but which is governed under the direct responsibility of the UN representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina). The Federation, which is more decentralized than the Republika Srpska, is also divided into cantons with cantonal governments. The Republic, a sort of protectorate of the European Union, has in reality only a little power: it is the High Representative of the UN who represents the highest authority and has executive powers; the presidency of the Republic is symbolic and collective (one Bosniak, one Croat – who are elected by the citizens of the Federation - and one Serb elected by those of the Republika Srpska) and it is the local authorities which manage the country on a day to day basis. This structure increases the role of the various levels of bureaucratic administration and leads to political parties – dominated by one or other ethnic group - playing an important role in the primitive accumulation of private capital. Since 2004 a military force of the European Union, EUFOR, has been stationed there, with about 7,000 soldiers. Only the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina has an international status.

[3The Transition is the name given to the political process following the death of Franco, which culminated in the Constitution of 1978

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