Why do citizens of Brčko District have to declare entity citizenship on their ID cards?

The Dayton Peace Agreement ensured the legal continuity of BiH, but with the condition of changing its internal structure. BiH is composed of two entities, Republika Srpska and the Federation of BiH, for whom it was believed they did not have the character of states. Reading the Dayton provisions on dual citizenship, which imply that citizens of BiH, in addition to BiH citizenship, must also have citizenship of one of the entities, has called this belief into question, analyzes Enes Pašalić, a representative in the Assembly of Brčko District.

Brčko District – A Third Entity

Every citizen of BiH is, depending on their place of residence, automatically a citizen of one of the entities, just as every citizen of an entity is automatically a citizen of BiH. Entity and BiH citizenship, and thus entity and BiH borders, mutually condition and legitimize each other, leaving the question of primacy open. What deviated from this Dayton entity logic and offered different possibilities was the Final Arbitration Decision for Brčko, which established Brčko District of BiH.

Brčko District of BiH is defined as a condominium, formally owned by both entities, but in practice, it has become a third entity, to which Republika Srpska and the Federation of BiH have "permanently and irrevocably" transferred their powers, and as such, it has been placed under the direct sovereignty of BiH. The entity border was abolished in the District, and thus the possibilities for automatic determination of entity citizenship and its connection to BiH citizenship. The Final Arbitration Decision and Citizenship Laws provide residents of the District with the option to choose the entity citizenship they need, due to the entity-national architecture of Dayton BiH and the Election Law, in order to participate in elections, but they are not forced to do so. Many citizens of the District have shown animosity towards entity citizenship. Thus, for state elections, which require an entity option, there were up to 30,000 fewer registered voters compared to local elections, for which an entity option is not required. It is evident that the animosity of the District citizens towards entity citizenship and the possibilities offered by the Final Arbitration Decision had to be overcome.

The Law on Amendments to the Law on Identity Cards of Citizens of BiH, adopted by the BiH Parliament in 2012, states in Article 6.2 that "at the request of the applicant for an ID card, or when necessary for the implementation of the Election Law of BiH, information on entity citizenship shall be entered into the ID card." It is still unclear under what conditions this Law was passed. However, this provision of the law, regardless of the fact that the competent department in the District never received its authentic interpretation, has in practice become an obligation for the citizens of the District to enter their entity citizenship when obtaining an ID card. Such an obligation is contrary to the Final Arbitration Decision, and thus violates the fundamental civil rights of the District residents.

What could have been done at the level of the District Assembly, where Bosniak ruling politics has long been a servant to the dominant Greater Serbian politics of SDS and SNSD, was a conclusion of the Assembly to implement state supervision over the implementation of the ID Card Law and the obligation to enter entity citizenship into ID cards for the citizens of the District. Supervision was carried out by officials of the Ministry of Civil Affairs. The report stated that, in accordance with Article 6.2 of the ID Card Law, it is necessary to enter entity citizenship into ID cards for the citizens of the District. The explanation states that otherwise, the citizens of the District would be denied the active right to vote, and given that "the right to vote is one of the fundamental rights of citizens, the competent authorities... cannot, through their illegal and improper actions, prevent the exercise of a fundamental right of citizens - the right to vote."

Disregard for the Final Arbitration Decision

What hypocrisy. As if the citizens of the District cannot exercise their right to vote with a certificate of entity citizenship, of course, provided they want to. The right to vote, as the word itself says, is a right, not an obligation, and possessing an ID card is an obligation. At the same time, the obligation to enter entity citizenship into the ID card is unconstitutional, because the Final Arbitration Decision has become an integral part of the BiH Constitution, and it states that entity citizenship is only an option, not an obligation. Justifying the obligation of District citizens to enter entity citizenship into their ID cards for the purpose of conducting elections is not only unsustainable but also disgusting. If the intention was to force the Brčko voting "flock" to participate in state elections, then it could have been done in a different way.

Of course, based on the Final Arbitration Decision, there were some completely different possibilities for the District and its citizens who, what an absurdity, through imposed entity logic, elect representatives to entity assemblies, even though entity laws do not apply in the District, elect deputies to the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliament through entity citizenship, even though BiH laws apply directly in the District, without entity mediation, and yet those with Federation of BiH entity citizenship do not participate in the election of the House of Peoples of the BiH Parliament and the Federation of BiH, because the District is not a canton, nor does it belong to any of the Federation's cantons, but these were obviously not seen from Sarajevo.

This mandatory entitization of citizenship in the District is just one of the current examples of violating the Final Arbitration Decision, which, unfortunately, in its local execution, has been ongoing for years, devastating everything Bosnian-Herzegovinian in the District, primarily common multi-ethnic institutions, through systemic crime and corruption, through debt that undermines the financial stability of the District, through disregard for state laws...

This time, it is being done, what a paradox, by state institutions, which are also represented by those who consider themselves heirs to the policy that risked not signing the Dayton Peace Agreement for the sake of arbitration on Brčko, and which achieved the solution contained in the Final Arbitration Decision.