On August 5, BiH’s largest Serb, Bosniak, and Croat political parties—the SNSD, SDA, and HDZ—signed an agreement on principles for formation of BiH-level authorities. Among the principles the three parties agreed on is that BiH is to gain full sovereignty and that the Office of the High Representative (OHR) is to be closed.
This is a welcome and long-overdue development. The High Representative continues to claim for itself, with no legal justification whatsoever, “Bonn powers” to rule over and punish BiH citizens by decree, vastly exceeding its legal mandate and casting aside the entire democratic system established by the BiH Constitution. The OHR claims the authority to impose laws by edict without even consulting BiH institutions. It also claims the power to impose extrajudicial punishments on BiH citizens without even the slightest form of due process or right of appeal. No person in the world save, perhaps, Kim Jong-un, holds such power even in his own country. To claim such powers over a foreign country in peacetime is without precedent in the modern era.
Evidently alarmed about the August 5 agreement, which suggests an emerging consensus on the need to accelerate the OHR’s closure, the OHR is digging in its heels. The OHR reacted to the agreement by issuing a statement emphasizing that the determination of whether the conditions for closure of the OHR have been met belongs to the Peace Implementation Council (an ad-hoc group of countries chaired by the High Representative himself), the UN Security Council, and the High Representative. That is to say, the OHR asserted that BiH’s own authorities cannot decide to close the OHR.
When a foreign institution claiming the powers of a dictator tells a sovereign state that it may not decide on the institution’s closure, how does that differ from an occupier?
The OHR’s statement even suggests, without any legal basis, that OHR has authority to block its own closure. One need not be a cynic to see that such authority would be a recipe for OHR to continue operating until the end of time, or at least for so long as it remains generously funded.
The High Representative was not imposed on BiH by the UN Security Council or anyone else. It was created by an international agreement, Annex 10 of the Dayton Accords, which was entered into by Republika Srpska, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and other signatories to the Dayton Accords. For the OHR to reject BiH’s ability to decide on the OHR’s closure is an outrageous affront to BiH’s sovereignty.
Next year, BiH will mark 25 years of peace under the Dayton Accords. It is high time for the OHR to close. Should the OHR insist on remaining open, BiH authorities should make clear that OHR’s asserted dictatorial authorities—which were always unlawful—are a nullity and that any OHR edicts will be ignored.
