False arbitration: How Republika Srpska tries to replace facts with a legal myth

By: A. Čorbo-Zećo

Republika Srpska is not a subject of international law. It's as simple as beans – they don't have a seat at the United Nations.

Therefore, the story that the RS entity is on the verge of initiating arbitration proceedings against BiH is actually a new attempt by the ruling structures in Republika Srpska to flood the media with their 'fabricated' stories.

That is why it is of exceptional importance to present evidence indicating the fact that RS is not a subject of international law.

Otherwise, according to the rules of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, at least one of the parties must be a state, as a subject of international law, because arbitration is usually conducted between two states that have a dispute over a certain issue. States are subjects of international law, while entities or administrative units within states are not.

And from RS, they point out that addressing the Court in The Hague is enabled by the conclusion of the National Assembly of RS, which was adopted in March at the proposal of the Speaker of the National Assembly, Nenad Stevandić.

The conclusion requests the arbitration of the dispute between RS and BiH, in the capacity of contracting parties to Annex Four of the Dayton Peace Agreement and Annex 10 concerning the mandate and powers of the High Representative.

The deadline for the parties to respond expired at the end of last week, thus opening the possibility for the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to rule on pressing issues in BiH.

A nicely packaged story loses its significance if we look back into the past.

The first document we are publishing states that the then FR Yugoslavia, as a state, had the status of a subject of international law and thus the right to participate in the negotiations and signing of Dayton.



Also, the document we are publishing states that no body of the then form of Republika Srpska authorized Nikola Koljević to sign the annexes of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which means that he was never authorized by anyone from Republika Srpska to sign the annexes, but was authorized by Slobodan Milošević in his capacity as President of Serbia or part of the then FR Yugoslavia, which consisted of Serbia and Montenegro, making his signature very questionable, and the reason is again the same, because Republika Srpska did not have and does not have today the status of a subject of international law to be able to sign international agreements/treaties.

The same sentence, in fact, confirms that the Republika Srpska entity, at the time of or after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, was not a subject of international law, and therefore could not be a signatory to an international agreement, which is essentially the Dayton Peace Agreement, which has the status of an international treaty in which only states as subjects of international law can participate.

The final document from Paris, again, states that Slobodan Milošević signed everything on behalf of Republika Srpska, which is again an indication that Republika Srpska is not a subject of international law.




Finally, another key fact is that Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a signatory to the Convention on the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which means that this court does not have jurisdiction to act on a request coming from an entity, and not from a state.

In other words – RS cannot sue BiH before an international arbitration court. Neither formally nor substantively.

The whole story about international arbitration is nothing more than a political construct without legal basis. Facts, documents, and international law clearly exclude the possibility that Republika Srpska, as an entity within BiH, can independently initiate international legal proceedings.

Everything else is spin.