Brčko District

The town Dayton couldn’t settle

The Dayton peace talks of 1995 drew an Inter-Entity Boundary Line through Bosnia and Herzegovina, between the Federation and the Republika Srpska, but could not agree who should control the Brčko area. Instead the parties agreed to binding arbitration of that part of the line.^[2]

The stakes were high. Brčko was the key to a corridor joining the eastern and western parts of the Republika Srpska; most of the town’s pre-war population had been Croats and Muslims, and it fell to Serb forces in 1992.^[4] In 1997 it was the only part of the country assigned to neither entity.^[4]

Owned by both, run by neither

The tribunal had three arbitrators: one named by the Federation, one by the Republika Srpska, and a presiding arbitrator, Roberts B. Owen, appointed by the International Court of Justice. Its first award, on 14 February 1997, left the line where it was and put Brčko under an international Supervisor with power to issue binding orders.^[2]

The Final Award, on 5 March 1999, turned the whole pre-war municipality into the Brčko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the country’s exclusive sovereignty, with a single multi-ethnic government, assembly, judiciary and police exercising the powers the two entities and three municipal governments had held there.^[2] The Supervisor explained that both entities would hold it as a condominium, their territories overlapping throughout the district, and that neither had “lost” or “won” Brčko.^[1] Britannica calls it a self-governing special district.^[5]

“The pre-war Opstina will now be held by both entities on a condominium basis so that the territories of the two entities will overlap throughout this new district.”^[1]

On its own

The district was inaugurated on 8 March 2000.^[2] On 31 August 2012 the Supervisor suspended his functions after 15 years and closed his office, saying the district’s elected leaders, “not appointed foreigners”, would now govern it, though the Arbitral Tribunal and the High Representative kept powers to step in if needed.^[3]