Even after 29 years since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, it is not known where the original copy of this document, which stopped the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and specified the constitutional and legal system of the state, is located and how it disappeared.
In early 2008, it was discovered that the original copy of the Dayton Agreement was lost, so at the request of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, France sent a certified copy. The fact that there is no copy in the languages of the constituent peoples has been used by politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina for years to interpret it differently.
Almost three decades after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, there is still controversy in Bosnia and Herzegovina about where the original of the signed document, which was brought from Paris to Sarajevo by then-President Alija Izetbegović, disappeared. The disappearance of the document was reported in 2008 by then-member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Željko Komšić. The original document, however, has not been found.
“A translation into the local languages has never been made, although both Belgrade and Zagreb have made translations to their liking on their own initiative. However, I think this is a technical flaw. Essentially, we have a High Representative who is called upon to interpret, to secure the civilian part of the peace agreement,” explains constitutional law professor Kasim Trnka.
Faculty of Law professor Vitomir Popović also agrees that the High Representative is the interpreter of the civilian part of the Dayton Agreement.
“To come to a position where someone says that you can interpret the Dayton Agreement in this or that way, that there are no originals, that we have some copies, you know what that means, this talk in the Balkans about such things, is extremely frivolous. If someone tells you “it says in Annex 10 that the High Representative is competent”, he is not competent, he is the interpreter, and that of the civil part of the agreement, which is related to its annex”, Popović points out.
This problem, according to the expert in constitutional law Nedim Ademović, is very easily solvable.
“In principle, our court interpreters should sit down at the state’s request and translate that document. Tomorrow, our people in Parliament can simply give an order to translate that constitution into three languages, but for political speculative reasons they will not do that”, says Ademović.
“Whether it was translated officially or not from English is not relevant to me, after all, all these years BiH has been functioning as a protectorate of the international community. If someone wanted to translate officially, they would have hired a court interpreter and translated it”, claims political scientist Danijel Vidović.
The Dayton Agreement preserved peace, but it is full of contradictions in competencies and symbols and needs to be changed or at least improved, believes Professor Pavle Mijović.
“That constitution brought political stability, but it sealed political divisions. We have a constitution that is declaratively discriminatory, that does not fit the ethnic majority criterion within a territory,” Mijović argued.
Over the past twenty-nine years, political actors in BiH have referred to the Dayton Agreement, although violations have occurred on all sides. For years, the leaders of the three constituent peoples in BiH have accused each other of violating the provisions of the Dayton Agreement and that they are the ones who respect them. Both the Dayton Agreement and the original, which has disappeared, serve only for political gain, while the well-being of all citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina is secondary, BHRT writes.
