E.U.’s Human Rights Court: Bosnia Discriminated Against Jews, Roma
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the exclusion of Jews and Roma from Bosnia?s highest state offices is unlawful discrimination.
Tuesday?s ruling is ?a major step forward in Europe?s struggle against discrimination and ethnic conflict,? said Sheri Rosenberg, co-counsel for Jakob Finci and a professor and director of the Human Rights Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. ?This decision affirms that ethnic domination should have no role in a democracy.?
By a vote of 14-3, the court found that the exclusion of Jews and Roma could not be justified. It stated that the ?authorities must use all available means to combat racism, thereby reinforcing democracy?s vision of a society in which diversity is not perceived as a threat but as a source of enrichment.?
The ruling in the case of Sejdic & Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina concerned the exclusion from the Bosnian presidency and the upper house of parliament of a Bosnian Jew and a Bosnian Roma. The Bosnian Constitution, drafted by negotiators during peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995, restricts the highest offices of state to members of Bosnia?s three main ethnic and religious groups ? the Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims.
Finci, the successful applicant, was born in a transit camp during World War II after his parents, Bosnian Jews, had been deported from the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. Returning to Bosnia after the war, he has had a distinguished career in public life and is now the Bosnian ambassador to Switzerland. But his ethnicity and religion prevented him from the possibility of seeking election to the highest offices of state.
Bosnia?s next presidential and parliamentary elections are due next October. Constitutional reform has been under discussion in Bosnia since 2005 but has not produced any change.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
