Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina, designated here as BiH), once a culturally rich jewel of the Balkan republics in the former Yugoslavia, suffered dramatically during the 1990s from a tragic civil war involving its three main ethnic groups—Serbs, Bosnian Muslims ("Bosniacs"), and Croats. The war impacted all aspects of Bosnian society and dramatically reduced the material and social quality of life in the country. Similarly, the war reshaped the percentages and numbers of ethnic minorities living in the country as well as the personal and professional relationships between members of various ethnic groups. In 1991 approximately 31 percent of the Bosnian population was Serb, 17 percent was Croat, and 44 percent was Bosniac, with 5.5 percent of the population considering themselves "Yugoslav" and 2.5 percent belonging to other ethnic minorities such as Roma/Sinti and Jews. About 27 percent of marriages were "mixed" across ethnic lines in 1991, and Bosnia and Herzegovina was well known for the compatible ethnic blending of the inhabitants in many of its towns and villages. Following the radical social, economic, and political transformations that occurred throughout Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the break-up of the Soviet Union in August of 1991, and a build-up of ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia (a six republic federation created by outside powers in 1918 at the end of the first World War), Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia in October 1991. By 1992 BiH was engulfed in a genocidal civil war, with significant outside military intervention from the Serbian army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Heavy shelling and violent attacks by the three warring sides destroyed the people, land, and social infrastructure of BiH, including the education system, between March 1992 and October 1995. Violence subsided only with a ceasefire declared in October 1995 when representatives from the three warring sides (Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs) met in Dayton, Ohio to develop a peace accord. This peace agreement, known officially as the "General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina" (unofficially, as the "Comprehensive Peace Agreement" or "Dayton Accords") was signed in Paris in December 1995. A freshly written Constitution for BiH was annexed to the peace agreement.

The Constitution developed as part of the Dayton Accords detailed a complete restructuring of the government of BiH, with Bosnia and Herzegovina to be kept intact as a single country with internationally recognized exterior boundaries equivalent to those standing before the war and the internal boundaries significantly realigned. The Dayton agreement recognized 51 percent of the territory of BiH as belonging to the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Federacija Bosna i Hercegovina, designated here as FBH), whose population is mainly Bosnian Muslim or Croat, and 49 percent of BiH as belonging to the Serbian Republic (Republika Srpska, designated here as RS), where the majority of the population is Serbian. ("Herzegovina" refers to a region just south of the country's border with Croatia in northern BiH where the majority of the population is Croat.) In addition to the two Entities, the northeastern Bosnian town of Brcko was demilitarized in March 2000 and is now recognized as a self-governing administrative unit under the jurisdiction of the national state, neither part of FBH nor of RS.

Each of the two sub-national territories, FBH and RS, is known as an "Entity," with Bosnia and Herzegovina itself considered a single, unified national state. In turn, the Federation (i.e., the Muslim/Croat majority Entity) is subdivided into ten Cantons where political power is relatively decentralized for many government functions. The Serb Republic is not subdivided. However, at both the national level and in both the FBH and the RS, much political control remains centralized with key policy decisions issuing from the national government organs and from each Entity's governing structures. At the national level, economic and foreign policy are decided by the national government organs of BiH. Based on the Dayton Accords, internal affairs, including education policies, are left to the Entities, and in the case of the Federation, in large measure to the ten Cantons. However, due to the problems arising from the operation of two entirely parallel educational systems and, in the case of FBH, ten subsystems, efforts were being made by the year 2000—with substantial encouragement and financial support from international organizations such as the World Bank, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, and the United Nations Development Programme—to redesign the country's education system and administrative structures, to upgrade and modernize teacher training, teaching methods, the curriculum, and textbooks, and generally to reform schools and improve the quality of instruction. (The World Bank loan of $10.6 million for the Education Development Project, for example, was designed to improve primary education and teacher training and, more specifically, was to be used to 1) finance grants for schools, teacher training (both pre-service and in-service), and scholarships; 2) define and assess performance standards in primary and secondary schools and to harmonize them with European standards; 3) provide technical assistance and training for academics to improve higher education; and 4) provide data for a Poverty Reduction Strategy and conduct a Living Standards Measurement Study.)

By early 2001, nearly 10 years after Bosnia and Herzegovina's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia, the ethnic make-up of BiH had changed rather significantly from the pre-war situation, along with the residential concentrations of the various ethnic groups living in different parts of the country. In 2001 approximately 40 percent of BiH's population was Serb, about 22 percent Croat, and about 38 percent Bosniac, the large number of war casualties and population displacements caused by the war having altered the ethnic mix. Regarding religion, the composition of BiH is approximately 40 percent Muslim, 31 percent Orthodox, 15 percent Roman Catholic, 4 percent Protestant, and 10 percent other (including some Jewish).

The population of BiH, estimated at about 3.8 to 4.2 million in 2000, had recovered in numbers almost to its pre-war size of 4.4 million, though the population had dropped dramatically in the 1990s due to the numbers of Bosnians who were killed in the war (about 250,000) or who fled the country (about 1.2 million). During the 1990s about two-thirds of the population in the 20- to 40-year-old range left the country. In 1999 only 3.5 million people were estimated to be living in Bosnia. In addition to those killed, more than 200,000 Bosnians were wounded in the war, and 13,000 were permanently disabled, including thousands of children. Within the country, about 850,000 people were still displaced (living outside their home communities) in 2001. (An official population census was to have been taken in 2001 but was postponed to 2003, making it very difficult to provide accurate statistics concerning the population and school enrollments or attainment, graduation, and literacy rates.) Approximately 60 percent of Bosnia's population lived in urban areas in 1999, at which time BiH had a population density of about 72 persons per square kilometer.

By 2000 BiH had a growth rate of about 3.1 percent, which was in part due to the increasing return of refugees who had been living abroad during the war. The fertility rate in BiH in 2000 was about 1.71 percent. Approximately 20 percent of Bosnians in the year 2000 were 14-years-old or younger while 71 percent of the population was between 15 and 64 years of age and about 9 percent was 65 or older. BiH had an infant-mortality rate of 15 per 1000 live births in 2000 and an under 5 years child-mortality rate of 18 per 1000. The average lifespan of Bosnians in the year 2000 was about 71.5 years (68.8 years for men and 74.4 for women).

Geographically speaking, BiH is an almost entirely land-locked country with only about 20 kilometers of coastline, though the country is situated close to the Adriatic Sea. BiH is bordered on the west and the north by Croatia, while Serbia (one of the two states remaining in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 2001) is located on its eastern side and Montenegro (the other remaining Yugoslavian state) is to its southeast. Measuring 15,209 square kilometers, BiH is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of West Virginia. The terrain of BiH is primarily mountains and valleys with large forested areas, especially in the RS; the highest elevation is Maglic at 2.386 meters high.

For centuries the Bosnian economy was primarily agricultural. The primary agricultural products were wheat, corn, fruit, vegetables, and livestock. In the decades before the war of the 1990s BiH became increasingly industrialized, producing wood products, furniture, and military equipment for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia due to the prevalence of forests and metallic ores in the country. In 1996 about 23 percent of the Bosnian workforce was employed in industry, 58 percent in services, and just 19 percent in agriculture. After the war, as international donors infused substantial financial support to restart BiH's economy and State and Entity officials and international actors collaboratively developed new plans to prepare BiH's population for employment, this balance was expected to shift even further toward the service sector, though the transformation was anticipated to be gradual. By 1999 the Bosnian economy was growing at an annual rate of roughly 5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). However, a sizable black market also was in operation, as well as a "gray market" of workers who were paid but did not receive job-related benefits. Furthermore, many of those legally employed waited long periods for delayed paychecks, a situation that may have discouraged many from seeking regular employment. The unemployment rate in the country was about 35 to 40 percent in 1999. BiH's annual per capita income (i.e., the gross domestic product per person in U.S. dollars) was only $1,030 in 1999—a substantial drop from the per capita income level of $2,400 in 1990, but a significant rise from the immediate post-war rate of $456 in late 1995. (Per capita income in the Republika Srpska for 1999 was significantly higher: US$1,934.) International donor aid accounted for about 30 percent of the GDP in BiH in 2000. Before the war Bosnia and Herzegovina was the second-poorest republic of the six member states in Yugoslavia. About 27 percent of Bosnians were living below the relative poverty line in 2001, while 11 percent were living in extreme poverty. Regional disparities are quite apparent in the standard of living in different parts of the country; about half the population of RS in 2001 was living below the poverty line whereas in Sarajevo (the Federation's capital city) and West Herzegovina (one of the Croat-majority areas) fewer people were living in poverty.