WHICH IS SUPERIOR - THE ENTITY OR THE STATE

B&H Citizenship

AIM Sarajevo, 9 August, 1997

The issue of the citizenship of B&H will, it seems, be resolved by arbitration of the High Representative of the international community. Neither threats with punishment nor Richard Holbrooke's efforts to persuade them have been sufficient for the Council of Ministers of B&H to reach a legal solution acceptable for both entities.

Discussions about this issue which lasted for days seemed to be constantly moving in a vicious circle without any essential progress. The problem which "tormented" the Council of Ministers can be brought down to the question which is superior - the citizenship of B&H or the citizenship of the entities, that is, who will be the one to decide about granting the citizenship to foreigners, the state of B&H or the entities.

In normal states, the law on citizenship is more or less purely a technical law, because this subject matter is crystally clear, and differences appear only in details varying from country to country. In principle, citizenship is acquired automatically by birth on the territory of a country, in other words, children practically inherit the citizenship of their parents. All countries also prescribe the possibility of granting citizenship to foreigners, but these are always rare exceptions.

The trench warfare about this law in the Council of Ministers of B&H confirms that this is primarily a political issue, and only then legal. Almost everything is disputable. The Serb party insists on the demand that the entities regulate the issues of citizenship, and that citizenship of B&H be acquired automatically by acquiring the citizenship of the entities.

The Bosniac party, referring to the provisions of the Dayton Constitution, where among the few rights and obligations of the state of B&H is regulation of the issue of citizenship, insists that granting of citizenship of B&H be a matter dealt with by joint institutions and not the authorities of the entities.

Granting citizenship of B&H to foreigners has in this way become the key problem which is in the centre of all the other problems. The reason for this is simple. After the Croatian "Storm" two years ago, more than 150 thousand Serbs fled from Croatia and found refuge on the territory of RS. The main objective of RS is to make their stay in B&H permanent by granting them citizenship of B&H which would make them domestic citizens instead of foreigners. This would make them automatically entitled to participate in the elections and they form a significant part of the electorate which the current authorities of RS rely on. If they received the citizenship of B&H, ethnic structure in B&H would significantly change, and return of the banished Bosniacs and Croats to their homes in RS would be even more uncertain.

The key argument the authorities in RS are manipulating is the question of the Serb refugees from Croatia. The current authorities there always link their opposition to the return of the Bosniacs and the Croats to RS to the return of the Serbs from Croatia to their homes, because they are now mostly colonized in the homes of the Bosniacs and the Croats. By acquiring the citizenship of B&H, the Serbs from Croatia would become the "cement" which would make the current temporary situation practically final.

That is why the government of RS has by its regulations and decisions in the past two years liberalized the right to acquiring citizenship to such an extent that the only condition for it is a wish to become a citizen of RS. However, it seems that even that was not good enough, so the drafted amendments of the law on citizenship proposed postponing of the time limit for acquiring the citizenship by citizens of former Yugoslav republics (read: the Serbs from Croatia) until the end of this year.

At the same time, when speaking of the war period, the authorities of the Federation are not immune to "instant granting of citizenship" either, primarily to the Bosniacs from Sandzak. Conditions for acquiring the citizenship have gradually become more rigid, so that from the initial "personal feeling" as the only condition, nowadays it is necessary to meet a whole series of requirements by model of western standards. But, there is no doubt that the initial "wish for B&H citizenship" has been granted in due time to numerous people from Sandzak.

    One of the rare issues a principled agreement has been

reached on is establishment of a parliamentary commission (yet another one!) which should, once the new law is adopted, investigate each case of granted citizenship on the territory of B&H in the period from 6 April, 1992, until the date of coming into force of this law, in order to determine whether provisions of the new law are implemented.

Although the draft law seems to be quite justified and reasonable, there is the question of its practical implementation. Although there are no exact data, it is evaluated that during the war the number of naturalized citizens on the territory of both B&H entities exceeded 200 thousand, which practically means that such a commission would need several decades to complete the job.

    In any case, the authorities in RS also have reason to

resolve the question of citizenship, because it is directly connected with the law on passport. At this moment, citizens of RS are travelling to the countries of the world with the Yugoslav passports, which the FRY "obligingly enables them to have". However, when it comes to the citizenship of FRY it is not that generous. The latest law on citizenship of FRY (in force as of 1 January this year) FRY prescribes the possibility of naturalization, not automatically though, but depending on each separate case, and the regime in Belgrade has the discrete right to accept or reject applications.

    The authorities in Croatia have also given away

Croatian citizenship lavishly, as well as passports to all the Croats and those who felt that way regardless where they live and where they were born. To the current Croatian policy, return of the Serbs does not seem to be a very good idea and they would be extremely happy to find a home for them in any other state, be it B&H or FRY.

The Serbs from Croatia and the banished Bosniacs and Croats from RS are the ones who suffer the consequences of this "high policy". The authorities in RS deprive the banished Croats and Bosniacs of the right to citizenship, demanding that this problem be resolved when, and if, they return to their homes on the territory of RS.

Resolution of the question of citizenship will greatly condition whether the right to return of all the banished persons to their homes will remain just a dead letter and therefrom a permanent cause of instability and a possible spark of a new war, or whether this fundamental human right to choose the place where one wishes to live would be respected as well as the promise of the world that consequences of ethnic cleansing would be annulled.

    After massive ethnic cleansing during the war, B&H is

entering a new phase of postwar ethnic engineering. The goal is the same but the means are different. While ethnic cleansing was carried out under the threat with arms, ethnic engineering is performed by more sophisticated methods, laws and other regulations in order to cover it all up under a veil of laws and legality. How much the international community really cares about its own principles will be seen after arbitration of its High Representative and solutions he chooses as the way out of the current stalemate.

Drazen SIMIC

(AIM Sarajevo)