Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of "Bosnian War"

The most widely professed religion in Bosnia and Herzegovina is Islam and the second biggest religion is Christianity. Nearly all the Muslims of Bosnia are followers of the Sunni denomination of Islam; the majority of Sunnis follow the Hanafi legal school of thought (fiqh) and Maturidi theological school of thought (kalām). Bosniaks are generally associated with Islam, Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Catholic Church, and Bosnian Serbs with the Serbian Orthodox Church. The State Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the entity Constitutions of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska provide for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respects this right in ethnically integrated areas or in areas where government officials are of the majority religion; the state-level Law on Religious Freedom also provides comprehensive rights to religious communities. However, local authorities sometimes restricted the right to worship of adherents of religious groups in areas where such persons are in the minority.

Government protection of religious freedom declined, especially during the campaign period prior to the October 2006 national elections, due to selective legal enforcement and the indifference of some government officials. At the end of the period covered by this report, the Government was implementing the State Law on Religious Freedom to protect the rights of religious communities and create a government registry allowing them to establish legal status.

The Croats (/ˈkroʊæts/; Croatian: Hrvati, pronounced [xr̩ʋǎːti]) are a South Slavic ethnic group native to Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other neighboring countries in Central and Southeastern Europe who share a common Croatian ancestry, culture, history and language. They form a sizeable minority in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Due to political, social and economic reasons, many Croats migrated to North and South America as well as New Zealand and later Australia, establishing a diaspora in the aftermath of World War II, with grassroots assistance from earlier communities and the Catholic Church. In Croatia (the nation state), 3.9 million people identify themselves as Croats, and constitute about 90.4% of the population. Another 553,000 live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they are one of the three constituent ethnic groups, predominantly living in Western Herzegovina, Central Bosnia and Bosnian Posavina. The minority in Serbia number about 70,000, mostly in Vojvodina. The ethnic Tarara people, indigenous to Te Tai Tokerau in New Zealand, are of mixed Croatian and Māori (predominantly Ngāpuhi) descent. Tarara Day is celebrated every 15 March to commemorate their "highly regarded place in present-day Māoridom".

Republika Srpska (Serbian Cyrillic: Република Српска [repǔblika sr̩̂pskaː] ), also referred to as the Republic of Srpska or the Serb Republic, is one of the three political divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the others being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Brčko District. Situated in the northern and eastern regions of the country, it recorded a population of 1,228,423 in the 2013 census. Its largest city and administrative hub is Banja Luka, located on the banks of the Vrbas River.

Republika Srpska was established in 1992 at the onset of the Bosnian War with the stated purpose of safeguarding the interests of the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the conflict, the expulsion of the majority of Croats and Bosniaks from territories controlled by Republika Srpska occurred, while the majority of Serbs were displaced or expelled from the present-day Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Republika Srpska. The 1995 Dayton Agreement created Republika Srpska as one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's two constituent entities. Today, it is inhabited by the Serb population of the country.

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement or the Dayton Accords (Serbo-Croatian: Dejtonski mirovni sporazum / Дејтонски мировни споразум), and colloquially known as the Dayton (Bosnian: Dejton; Serbian: Дејтон / Dejton), is the peace agreement ending the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, an armed conflict part of the larger Yugoslav Wars. It was signed on 21 November 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, United States, at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was re-signed ceremonially in Paris, France on 14 December 1995.

The warring parties agreed to peace and to a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of two parts: the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina entered into the related arms control treaty, the Florence Agreement, in 1996 under the Accords. The Dayton followed the Washington Agreement, signed the year prior, in collective efforts to delineate the country's geography.

The Croatian Parliament (Croatian: Hrvatski sabor) or the Sabor is the unicameral legislature of Croatia. Under the terms of the Croatian Constitution, the Sabor represents the people and is vested with legislative power. The Sabor is composed of 151 members elected to a four-year term on the basis of direct, universal and equal suffrage by secret ballot. Seats are allocated according to the Croatian Parliament electoral districts: 140 members of the parliament are elected in multi-seat constituencies. An additional three seats are reserved for the diaspora and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while national minorities have eight places reserved in parliament. The Sabor is presided over by a Speaker, who is assisted by at least one deputy speaker (usually four or five deputies).

The Sabor's powers are defined by the Constitution and they include: defining economic, legal and political relations in Croatia, preservation and use of its heritage and entering into alliances. The Sabor has the right to deploy the Croatian Armed Forces abroad, and it may restrict some constitutional rights and liberties in wartime or in cases of imminent war or following natural disasters. The Sabor amends the borders of Croatia or the Constitution, enacts legislation, passes the state budget, declares war and decides on cessation of hostilities, adopts parliamentary resolutions and bylaws, adopts long-term national security and defence strategies, implements civil supervision of the armed forces and security services, calls referendums, performs elections and appointments conforming to the constitution and applicable legislation, supervises operations of the Government and other civil services responsible to the parliament, grants amnesty for criminal offences and performs other duties defined by the constitution.

The Croatian diaspora (Croatian: Hrvatsko iseljeništvo or Hrvatsko rasuće) consists of ethnic Croat people, their descendants, and Croatian citizens living outside of Croatia. An excess of four million people are part of the Croatian diaspora. The nationality laws of Croatia affords citizenship by birth, ancestry, and naturalization, growing the Croatian citizen population living abroad.

Estimates on its size are only approximate because of incomplete statistical records and naturalization, but upper-level estimates suggest that the Croatian diaspora numbers between a third and a half of the total number of Croats. Within neighboring Southeast Europe, the largest community are with the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the constituent nations of that country, amounting to about 545,000. Outside of these two regions, broader Europe is home to around one million Croatians, with 1.7 million living overseas. The largest diaspora community is in the United States at 1.2 million Croatian Americans, which significantly influence Croatia–United States relations. In Western Europe, the largest group is found in Germany with a reported 228,000 Croatian Germans as of 2006, with some estimates including naturalized citizens as high as 500,000. There are significant numbers of the diaspora in the Indo-Pacific, mainly in Australia (165,000) and New Zealand (up to 100,000).

More than 96% of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina belongs to one of its three autochthonous constituent peoples (Serbo-Croatian: konstitutivni narodi / конститутивни народи): Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats. The term constituent refers to the fact that these three ethnic groups are explicitly mentioned in the constitution, and that none of them can be considered a minority or immigrant. The most easily recognisable feature that distinguishes the three ethnic groups is their religion, with Bosniaks predominantly Muslim, Serbs predominantly Eastern Orthodox, and Croats Catholic.

Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs speak the Shtokavian dialect of a pluricentric language known in linguistics as Serbo-Croatian. The question of standard language is resolved in such a way that three constituent peoples have their educational and cultural institutions in the standard varieties, which are considered official languages at sub-state levels: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.