Dervo Sejdic has served his country as a policeman but the Bosnian citizen does not have the right to stand for president because he is an ethnic Roma, an exclusion that also applies to Jews.

Bosnia's constitution, drafted to end Europe's worst fighting since World War Two, allows only Muslims, Serbs and Croats - former Yugoslavs who had fought each other in a 1992-95 war - to run for the country's highest office.
 

Sejdic complained to the European Court of Human Rights and won, a decision that could force the still divided Balkan state to look beyond its ethnic matrix in a year when important national elections are scheduled.
 

"This ruling is of decisive importance for the development of Bosnia's democracy," said Sarajevo University professor Enver Kazaz. "This is the first example of civic action that will force authorities to react."
 

If and when constitutional changes are implemented, analysts say it extend full civil rights to close to 500,000 Bosnians known as 'others', citizens who have largely abstained from voting for nationalist Serb, Muslim and Croat leaders in the country of 3.85 million.
 

In its December decision, sparked by a complaint from Sejdic and Bosnian Jewish community ex-leader Jakob Finci, the European Court of Human Rights ruled the constitution was discriminatory and must allow minorities to run for high office.

Inequality targeted
"With this suit, I started an avalanche aimed at correcting the inequality of citizens in Bosnia-Herzegovina," said Sejdic, who added he will never run for president himself.
 

Failure to implement the ruling could set Bosnia back even futher behind its neighbours in its bid to join the European Union. But if Bosnian leaders do comply, they could open the door to constitutional change long sought by Western officials.
 

Last autumn, top EU and US diplomats offered Bosnia's rival leaders a set of minor constitutional changes as a vehicle to move the country faster towards integration into the EU and NATO. Most rejected the package and the talks collapsed.

Consequences
While Sejdic said that his motion was not based on personal ambition but on principle, Finci, who now serves as Bosnia's ambassador in Switzerland, filed the suit after his bid to stand in a presidential race was rejected because he was a Jew.
 

"This is a very blunt, serious and direct discrimination based on ethnic background, on race," said Dimitris Kourkoulas, head of the European Commission delegation in Bosnia.
 

The Strasbourg-based rights court cannot order a country to implement its decisions, but failure to do so may have grave consequences for a country's European future. The Council of Europe could, for example, suspend Bosnia's membership.
 

Some Western diplomats have warned that the EU may also suspend the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), its first formal pact with Bosnia that should lead to the Balkan country's eventual membership of the 27 member bloc.

EU obligations
"By violating human rights, the country also does not comply with obligations vis-a-vis the European Union," Kourkoulas told Reuters, adding that the bloc had a wide range of instruments it could use if there was no compliance. "The SAA suspension is the last, let's say most radical tool."
 

Kourkoulas said he expected the authorities to change the constitution and electoral law before the election in October.
 

Bosnia's political parties acknowledge the need to harmonise the constitution with the European Charter of Human Rights but disagree on how to do it. Some say such important changes should not be rushed in an election year.
 

"It's a technical issue; we need only political will," Sejdic said. "Implementing the ruling will change Bosnia's image and speed up the democratisation process in the country and its integration into Europe."
 

Source: Reuters