BOSNIA MAJOR ETHNIC GROUPS AND THEIR ACTION

Bosnia three major ethnic groups and their courses of action



Bosnia three major ethnic groups and their courses of action

Introduction

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is a country situated in Southeast Europe that is slightly smaller than West Virginia and shares borders with the Adriatic Sea, Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia. The southern part of the country has a Mediterranean climate characterized by sunny warm summers and mild rainy winters and central and northern Bosnia has a continental climate that is characterized by hot summers and cold and snowy winters. The heaviest rainfalls are during the spring and fall. The population is 4,621,598 and the population density is 90.3 per sq km. Sarajevo is the capital, the largest city and the commercial center. Its population is 392,000.

The only port is at Neum, which is located on the Adriatic Sea, 190 km southwest of the capital. Arable land accounts for 19.6% of the country, 48.6% of the population lives in urban areas, there are 30 sq km of irrigated land, 1.9% of the land is devoted to permanent crops, there are 20 km of coastline and 42.7% of the country is covered by forests. The median age is 40.3 years, the birth rate is 8.9 per 1,000 people, the death rate is 8.7 per 1,000 people, the fertility rate is 1.26 children per female, 14.2% of the population is under 14, 30.0% is between 25 and 44 and 14.9% is 65 and over. The population is declining at an annual rate 0.17% (UN estimate for 2010-2015). The time zone is 1 hour ahead of Greenwich meantime. There are 4 spoken languages. The official languages are Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. BiH is one of the six former federal states of Yugoslavia.

It is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country with 48% of the population Bosnian, 37.1% Serbian and 14.3% Croatian. About 40% of the population is Muslim, 31% is Orthodox Christian and 15% is Roman Catholic. The country is divided into 2 entities. The Republika Srpska (RS) is largely populated by Serbs and covers 49% of the area of the country. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) is composed mostly of Bosnians and Croats and accounts for the remainder of the territory. A third entity consists of the self-governing administrative district of Brcko that is formally part of both the RS and FBiH. It has a population of about 79,000 of which 46.6% are Serbs, 44.0% Bosnians and the remainder Croat.

HISTORY AND ETHNIC RELATIONS

Emergence of the Nation. The first known inhabitants of the region were the Illyrians. The Romans conquered the area in 167 B.C.E. In 395 C.E. , the Roman Empire was split into Byzantium in the east and the Western Roman Empire in the west. The dividing line was the Drina River, which today forms the border between Bosnia and Serbia. Bosnia took on a special significance as the boundary region between the two empires.

The Slavs arrived in the Balkans around 600 ...