page_title: Republika Srpska
section_title: Impact of war
hierarchical_section_title: Republika Srpska / History / Impact of war
caption_attribution_description: English: Gravestones at the Potočari genocide memorial near Srebrenica Deutsch: Grabsteine an der Völkermord-Gedenkstätte in Potočari in der Nähe von Srebrenica
context_page_description: Republika Srpska is one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its largest city and administrative centre is Banja Luka, lying on the Vrbas river.
  The entity encompasses most of the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina-populated portions of Bosnia and Herzegovina situated in the north and east of the country. Formed in 1992 at the outset of the breakup of Yugoslavia, Republika Srpska, following the Dayton Accords, achieved international recognition as part of a federal Bosnia and Herzegovina.
  Today, Republika Srpska maintains a parliamentary-style government, with the National Assembly holding legislative power within the entity. Republika Srpska is relatively centralised, although it is split into 2nd-level administrative units—municipalities, or opštine—of which there are 64. The legislature holds 83 seats, and the current session is the ninth since its founding.
context_section_description: The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina resulted in major changes in the country, some of which were quantified in a 1998 UNESCO report. Some two million people, about half the country's population, were displaced. In 1996 there were some 435,346 ethnic Serb refugees from the Federation in Republika Srpska, while another 197,925 had gone to Serbia. In 1991, 27% of the non-agricultural labour force was unemployed in Bosnia and this number increased due to the war. By 2009, the unemployment rate in Bosnia and Herzegovina was estimated at 29%, according to the CIA's The World Factbook. Republika Srpska's population of Serbs had increased by 547,741 due to the influx of ethnic Serb refugees from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the former unrecognised state of the Republic of Serbian Krajina in the new Republic of Croatia.
  In Eastern Bosnia, Bosnian Serbs besieged the town of Srebrenica, among others. Srebrenica was declared a UN 'Safe Area' in 1993 and it served as an enclave for Muslim refugees for the final years of the Bosnian War. In the middle of July 1995, more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica, were killed in what became known as the Srebrenica massacre, which was subsequently designated as an act of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice.
  The number of Croats was reduced by 135,386 (the majority of the pre-war population), and the number of Bosniaks by some 434,144. Some 136,000 of approximately 496,000 Bosniak refugees forced to flee the territory of what is now Republika Srpska have since returned home.
  As of 2008, 40% of Bosniaks and 8.5% of Croats had returned to Republic Srpska, while 14% of Serbs who left their homes in territories controlled by Bosniaks or Croats, also returned to their pre-war communities.
  In the early 2000s, discrimination against non-Serbs was alleged by NGOs and the Helsinki Commission. The International Crisis Group reported in 2002 that in some parts of Republika Srpska a non-Serb returnee is ten times more likely to be the victim of violent crime than is a local Serb. The Helsinki Commission, in a 2001 statement on 'Tolerance and Non-Discrimination', pointed at violence against non-Serbs, stating that in the cities of Banja Luka and Trebinje, mobs attacked people who sought to lay foundations for new mosques.
  Non-Serbs have reported continuing difficulties in returning to their original homes and the assembly has a poor record of cooperation in apprehending individuals indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
  Organisations such as the Society for Threatened Peoples, reporting to the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2008, have made claims of discrimination against non-Serb refugees in Republika Srpska, particularly areas with high unemployment in the Drina Valley such as Srebrenica, Bratunac, Višegrad, and Foča.
  According to the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees of Bosnia and Herzegovina, European Union Police Mission, UNHCR, and other international organisations, security in both Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is at present satisfactory, although some minor threats, real or perceived, can still influence the decision of individuals as to whether they will return to their pre-war addresses or not.
caption: Srebrenica–Potočari Memorial
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