The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ruled that some history textbooks in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, used to teach pupils about the 1990s war, are ethnically biased and contravene education law.
Lejla Memic, January 24, 2025
The Bosnian Constitutional Court in session. Photo: Constitutional Court.
The Constitutional Court in Sarajevo ruled on Thursday that materials in the Republika Srpska school textbook ‘History for Ninth Grade of Primary School’ referring to the founding of the Serb-dominated entity in 1992 and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina are not compatible with the constitution and should no longer be used.
The ruling came after by 13 members of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina filed a request for the evaluation of the constitutionality of the part of the curriculum, which they claim glorifies war criminals like former Republika Srpska President Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Serb Army chief Ratko Mladic.
The court ruled that the section f the textbook entitled ‘Republika Srpska and the Homeland Defence War’ also contravened the country’s educational standards legislation.
Under the decision it is forbidden to teach the history to the ninth grade of primary school this section of the textbook.
The Constitutional Court tasked Republika Srpska’s minister of education and culture, along with the director of the Republic Pedagogical Institute of Republika Srpska, with implementing the decision.
The new curriculum in Republika Srpska, which went into use in September, teaches primary school students that Karadzic and Mladic, both sentenced to life in prison by the Hague Tribunal for genocide and other crimes, were wartime heroes.
An appendix to the controversial textbook states that all pupils should study theee topics: “The Inception of Republika Srpska; The Army of the Republika Srpska and the Homeland Defence War (1992-1995); The suffering of and crimes against the Serb people and Republika Srpska after the Dayton Agreement; Culture of remembrance in the local community.”
Under the heading ‘Learning Outcomes’, it states that every pupil in Republika Srpska should be able to “explain the circumstances and the significance of the establishment of the Army of Republika Srpska; cite the causes and consequences of the Homeland Defence War; cite the most important wartime operations of the Bosnian Serb Army, theatres of operations and their significance; cite the sites of suffering of the Serbs during the Homeland Defence War as well as the biggest killing fields of Serbs in the 20th century”.
The Constitutional Court argued that the history curriculum for the period 1992-95 should have been designed “in such a way that it covered several different perspectives in order to obtain the most objective and complete picture of past events, and to take into account the different perspectives and experiences of different ethnic, religious and cultural groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
The textbook also states that January 9 is marked each year as Day of Republika Srpska, despite being banned by the Constitutional Court over discrimination issues. It further states that Republika Srpska”maintains close ties with its motherland Serbia” and that “decisions by the Office of the High Representative [Bosnia’s international overseer] and the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina were often against the interests of Republika Srpska”.
The Constitutional Court said in a statement that this portrayal “directly undermines trust in the legal order of the state, which is contrary to respect for the principles of democracy and the rule of law”.
The court statement declared that educational materials, “especially those related to history and society, must be harmonised with legal norms and democratic values, in order to prevent discrimination, revisionism, ideological manipulation or indoctrination of children”.
Failure to mention court verdicts on genocide and war crimes in the appropriate context trivialises these crimes and negatively affects the reconciliation process, it added.
Copyright BIRN 2015