ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief historical background and a description of major events in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It also provides basic political, economic, and social data arranged in the following categories: polity, economy, population, purchasing power parities, life expectancy, ethnic groups, capital, political rights, civil liberties, and status. The chapter discusses the progress and decline of political rights and civil liberties in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In March, leaders of the Croat community in Bosnia-Herzegovina announced that they were pulling out of state-wide and federal governmental institutions and instituting "self-rule" to protest changes to electoral laws imposed by the international community in 2000. In August, Bosnia's Parliamentary Assembly passed the long-awaited Election Law, which in theory will allow local authorities to assume responsibility from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for future elections. A significant problem in post-war Bosnia has become its emergence as a country of destination for trafficking in women.
