Sarajevo/Brussels, 2 June 2003: A report
Bosnia's Brcko: Getting In, Getting On and Getting Out*, recommends that this month's meeting of the Peace Implementation Council should start planning an exit strategy for the international supervisory regime in the Brcko District of Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Brcko has caused much controversy in the past. Its status was left unresolved by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. Since 1999, as a result of a series of international arbitration decisions, it has been a special District, shared by Bosnia’s two entities, Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina, with considerable power held by an international Supervisor.
ICG’s Bosnia Project Director Mark Wheeler said: “Once seen as the most likely flashpoint for any renewed warfare in BiH, Brcko has prospered to such an extent that it is regularly and rightly invoked both as the shining example of international stewardship and as a model for emulation by the rest of the country. Its reforms of the civil and criminal justice systems, of education and of municipal government have led the way. It has enjoyed significant foreign investment, a promising privatisation program, and the highest average wages in the country. Success has bred success. Those ‘cleansed’ during the war have returned in large numbers. Displaced persons who came to Brcko have opted to stay.”
ICG argues that the Supervisor’s powers cannot go on indefinitely, and indeed should not outlast those of the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia & Herzegovina. The viability of what has been achieved in Brcko will soon have to be tested in elections.
ICG Europe Program Director Nicholas Whyte said: “District elections should be called no later than October 2004, when the next round of entity municipal elections is due to take place. Fear that the wrong parties might win is an increasingly lame excuse for their deferral, especially if the Brcko model of clean and effective multinational government is to have any salience for the rest of BiH. In any case, by 2004 the parties in government will have had plenty of time to win over the populace. Whether they do so or not, it will still be possible – and advisable – for the Supervisor to stay on for up to a year to mediate the transition.”
ICG also argues that Brcko’s integration into the Bosnian state must not be an absorption or subordination, but a guarantee of the district’s constitutional status while the entities endure. This will be the best means of ensuring that as much as possible of what has been achieved in Brcko does not remain an isolated phenomenon of liberal colonialism, but is ‘mainstreamed’ into BiH.”
The international community should also deliver a clear message to Albanian leaders that their goal of independence within existing boundaries can only be realistic if they ensure that minority communities can live in Kosovo as free and equal citizens and to the Serbs in Kosovo and Belgrade alike that cooperation with the UN and the majority Albanian community is the best way to improve the practical situation and enhance their standing without prejudicing final status decisions.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Francesca Lawe-Davies (Brussels) +32-(0)2-536 00 65
Jennifer Leonard (Washington) +1-202-785 1601
*Read the full ICG report on our website:
www.crisisweb.org
The International Crisis Group (ICG) is an independent,
non-profit, multinational organisation, with over 90 staff members on five continents,
working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent
and resolve deadly conflict.
