Based on the binding judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of February 26, 2007 in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, We, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are decisively against any form of discrimination, committed to the rule of law and the justice for the victims of aggression and genocide, obeying the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, obeying the European Charter of Local Self-Government, obeying the Charter of the United Nations, have decided by means of this Declaration to implement the judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of February 26, 2007 in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, on this 24th day of September, 2010, adopt
The Declaration of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
The International Court of Justice, on February 26, 2007, in its legally binding judgment in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro „Finds that Serbia has violated the obligation to prevent genocide, under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in respect of the genocide that occurred in Srebrenica in July 1995.” The Court ruled that the genocide was committed by the government and institutions of “Republika Srpska” and specifically the Army (VRS) and Police (MUP) of „Republika Srpska” and that Serbia had an obligation to prevent the genocide. Filing the law suit for genocide in 1993 preceded all subsequent constitutional and legal arrangements for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The final judgment of the International Court of Justice supersedes all constitutional arrangements that are offered today to the victims of aggression and genocide including Annex 4 to the Dayton Agreement.
Therefore, We, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the victims of aggression and genocide, based on the binding judgment of the International Court of Justice and applying the legal right to RESTITUTIO IN INTEGRUM (restoration of the original condition) based on the peremptory norms of International law JUS COGENS, adopt The Declaration that We will exclusively obey the constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and that we will fight to restore the institutions of the nation as they were before the aggression and genocide, and We declare null and void the Dayton Constitution and institutions created under the Dayton Constitution.
The constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only legally binding document on the basis of which the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been recognized. This constitution ended communism and provided for free multiparty elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990 and provided for free referendum of its independence in 1992. Under this constitution, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina became a UN member nation. This constitution provides that each individual is sovereign on entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina irrelevant on ethnicity or religion.
Article 154 of the Constitution of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina: “ It is a sacred and inalienable right and duty of citizens, all members of all ethnic groups living in Bosnia and Herzegovina to protect and defend the liberty, independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity, and the organization of the Republic defined by the Constitution.”
Article 154 of the Constitution of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina: “No person has the right to recognize or to sign the capitulation, or to accept or recognize occupation of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina or any single part of it. No person has the right to prevent the citizens of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina from fighting any aggressor against the Republic. Such acts are unconstitutional and they are punishable as treason against the Republic. Treason against the Republic is the heaviest offence against the people and is treated as a criminal act of the highest degree.”
The international community acknowledged the will of people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as expressed in a referendum on March 1, 1992 and recognized the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign nation.
The rump-Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro today) and the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) have waged a war of aggression in 1992 against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to create an ethnically pure greater Serbia, that led to killing, genocide and suffering unseen in Europe since World War II. In legally binding Resolutions 752 and 757 from 1992, the UN Security Council adopted economic sanctions and political isolation to Serbia and Montenegro as punishment for their aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the provisional measures of the International Court of Justice on September 13, 1993, “the Court recorded that, since its Order [to Serbia and Montenegro] of April 8, 1993, and despite it and many resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, "great suffering and loss of life has been sustained by the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina in circumstances which shock the conscience of mankind and flagrantly conflict with moral law ..."
After the aggression and genocide, the constitution of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was illegally (with genocide) suspended and illegally replaced by the Dayton Constitution. There are no legal provisions under the international law nor customary laws that can be used as bases to replace constitution and political system of a sovereign nation by aggression and genocide. People of Bosnia and Herzegovina were deprived of their will through aggression and genocide. This is why we are obliged to return the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the constitutional, legal and territorial status that the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina had before the aggression and genocide.
The goal of the aggression and genocide against the people of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was to create an ethnically pure greater Serbia at the expense of territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The lawfulness and justice in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina will be accomplished only after the goal of the aggression and genocide is denied to the perpetrators of the aggression and genocide. According to International law, and domestic laws, anything what was achieved unlawfully can not be recognized as lawful.
The Dayton Agreement signed in Paris on December 1995 has rewarded the aggression and the genocide by imposing an illegal and unjust division on the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two “entities”: “Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina” and “Republika Srpska”, and by constructing unjust and self-paralyzing constitutional system that resulted in ineffective government structures.
The aggression and genocide was the foundation on which the Dayton Agreement and Dayton Constitution was forced on the victim nation, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide, nothing can justify subjugation of the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the jurisdiction of the constitutional, legal, and political arrangement of the Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina.
By the UN Charter, the United Nations were obligated to protect its member state, the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from aggression and genocide, and not to reward the perpetrators of aggression and genocide with the territory of the victim state.
The Dayton Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Annex IV of the General Framework of the Dayton Agreement) was imposed by aggression and genocide, and it was never properly adapted in accordance with the procedures for the amendment of the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Therefore, we will never recognize the Dayton Constitution nor any constitution or constitutional changes that might be adapted by institutions of the Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina.
If not nullified, the Dayton Constitution could become a LEGAL AND POLITICAL PRECEDENT that a constitution of a sovereign nation can be changed by foreign aggression and more so by aggression and genocide. The Dayton Constitution is a result of aggression and genocide and to build a future of Bosnia and Herzegovina on a base of the Dayton Constitution amounts to complicity in genocide. The Dayton constitution is constitution of aggression and genocide against people of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina by other means.
Under the Dayton Agreement, the unlawful governing power over the victims of aggression and genocide in the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina was put into the hands of those who committed the genocide and those who were complicit in the genocide. The people of State of Bosnia and Herzegovina, take the legitimate position that the current situation is unacceptable because it implies that the victims of aggression and genocide are themselves legalizing the aggression and genocide.
Any pressure or attempt to force the victims of aggression and genocide to get used to and accept the situation created by the genocide, is an act of genocide itself.
The present situation in the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina is nothing more than an illegal attempt that started with aggression in 1992 to legalize the aggression and genocide which now is confirmed by the Judgment of the International Court of Justice.
Therefore, this Declaration makes null and void the illegal Dayton constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which if not nullified could become a LEGAL AND POLITICAL PRECEDENT that a constitution of a sovereign nation can be changed by foreign aggression and more so by aggression and genocide.
This Declaration declares that both “entities,” “Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina” and “Republika Srpska” are illegal and illegitimate, as they were the products of the aggression, genocide, and illegal and illegitimate Dayton “Constitution”.
With this Declaration, the people of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina are invited to fight by all legal means to restore the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, flying the flag and using the symbols of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Any changes in the constitution can be enacted only according to the procedures defined by the Constitution of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the legal principle that supersede national laws, such as the Charter of the United Nations and corresponding Human Rights Conventions, but under no circumstances will they be based on the decisions of parallel, negotiated, war and other ad-hoc institutions and individuals with disputed legal authority.
In order to exercise its rights, based on the peremptory norms of International law (JUS COGENS), the people of the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina do not need an approval from the institutions that were condemned for the aggression and genocide nor from other institutions whose mandate originates from any agreement including the Dayton Agreement.
Below we set our signatures as a physical expression of our belief in the right of our people to determine our own future in a manner that respects the law and sovereignty of the individual citizen.
Ibran Mustafic
President of the Executive Board of Association “Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinje”
Potocari – Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Professor Francis A. Boyle
General Agent for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina with Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Powers before the International Court of Justice (1993-1994)
Champaign, Illinois, USA
Zineta Mujic
President of Association “Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinje”
Fojhari - Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ivana Mostarac
President, “Children’s Movement of Peace, Love, and Friendship”
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Fahrudin Alic
Bikodze – Lukavac, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Almir Omerovic
Modrica, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Vahid Sendijarevic
National Congress of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina;
Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Muhamed Borogovac
National Congress of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina;
Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina