Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Ethnification of the Citizenry

Abstract

Despite the almost millenary territorial continuity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country has suffered constant and deliberate historical obstructions of denial of its statehood due to its status as a multiethnic republic. The three majority groups that make up the territory – Serbs of Orthodox faith, Croats of Catholic faith, and Muslims – coexisted united until war broke down in 1992, a tragedy whose trigger was the ethnic ideology of identity populism that had been forged in the previous years and would become innate for the following generations. Since then, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been immersed in a long-lasting crisis – aggravated by the war in Ukraine – as a result of a poorly resolved peace and which has trapped the region in a convoluted system of ethnic weights and counterweights.