POST-CONFLICT RESTITUTION OF REAL RIGHTS ON RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE IN THE REGION - THE CASE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Abstract

The paper examines the issue of the mass termination and restitution of the tenancy rights of persons who, due to the hostilities and the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, had to leave the apartments in which they lived. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence on April 5, 1992, after the referendum, which was boycotted by the majority of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, decided that Bosnia and Herzegovina should withdraw from the common state - the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After this act, civil war started in Bosnia and Herzegovina. More than 2.2 million people have left their homes as a result of "ethnic cleansing" or because of violence or the threat of hostilities. In Bbosnia and Herzegovina, the international community, with its practical and concrete role, succeeded in compensating for the lack of not declarative, but effective internal political will, which was the main cause of obstacles to access to the rights of exiled persons. With the legal interventions of the High Representative, all entity regulations in Bosnia and Herzegovina were declared null and void, as well as all individual administrative, judicial and other acts by which the holder of the right of occupancy ceased to have the right of occupancy, and it was made possible for the pre-war holders of the right of occupancy to regain ownership of those apartments and to buy them back at a favorable price. This resulted in visible differences in refugees' access to property rights on residential real estate in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Autonomus Province of Kosovo and Metohija, as well as in the results.