Dayton and the Political Rights of Minorities: Considering Constitutional Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Acceptance of its Membership Application to the European Union.

The Dayton Accords are the peace agreement that ended the three-and-a-half-year war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The agreement was reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio in November 1995, and was formally signed in Paris on 14 December 1995. While the Dayton Accords ended the war, they had another function and purpose as well; they sought to construct a country that all warring factions (Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs) could call home. The Dayton Accords created the consociationalized political, governmental, and judicial structures in Bosnia as we know them today. The constitutional system designed by Dayton has effectively stopped the country from slipping back into war, but is viewed by scholars and experts as very flawed and as a major factor as to why Bosnia and Herzegovina has still not moved on from ethnic discord twenty-three years after the war. One of the major concerns that remains is that the Dayton constitution requires that the seats in two key institutions, the three-member presidency and the parliamentary House of Peoples, be equally divided amongst the constitutive peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs). This legally disallows members from the country's 17 officially recognized minority groups from holding office. The European Court of Human Rights has issued three rulings on this matter, citing that these limitations are violations of human rights and that Bosnia and Herzegovina must change its constitution to enfranchise minorities politically, which still has not happened. This paper explores the overall impact of the disenfranchisement of the country's consociationalized system on its minorities, why the constitution has not changed, and what may happen soon as Bosnia and Herzegovina has had its application accepted for European Union membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]