Washington Agreement (1994) in the context of "Canton (administrative division)"

The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbo-Croatian: Федерација Босне и Херцеговине, romanized: Federacija Bosne i Hercegovine; pronounced [federǎːtsija bôsneː i xěrtseɡoʋineː] ) is one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Republika Srpska. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of ten autonomous cantons with their governments and legislatures.

The Federation was created by the 1994 Washington Agreement, which ended the Croat–Bosniak War within the Bosnian War, and established a constituent assembly that continued its work until October 1996. The Federation has a capital, government, president, parliament, customs and police departments and two postal systems. It occupies about half of the land of Bosnia and Herzegovina. From 1996 until 2005 it had its own army, the Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, later merged in the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The capital and largest city is Sarajevo with 275,524 inhabitants.

The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence and insurgencies that took place from 1991 to 2001 in what had been the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFR Yugoslavia). The conflicts both led up to and resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991, into six independent countries matching the six entities known as republics that had previously constituted Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia (now called North Macedonia). SFR Yugoslavia's constituent republics declared independence due to rising nationalism. Unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries led to the wars. While most of the conflicts ended through peace accords that involved full international recognition of new states, they resulted in a massive number of deaths as well as severe economic damage to the region.

During the initial stages of the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) sought to preserve the unity of the Yugoslav nation by eradicating all nationalists in the governments of the republics. However, it increasingly came under the influence of Slobodan Milošević, whose government invoked Serbian nationalism as an ideological replacement for the weakening communist system. As a result, the JNA began to lose Slovenes, Croats, Kosovar Albanians, Bosniaks, and Macedonians, and effectively became a fighting force of only Serbs and Montenegrins. According to a 1994 report by the United Nations (UN), the Serb side did not aim to restore Yugoslavia; instead, it aimed to create a "Greater Serbia" from parts of Croatia and Bosnia. Other irredentist movements have also been brought into connection with the Yugoslav Wars, such as "Greater Albania" (from Kosovo, idea abandoned following international diplomacy) and "Greater Croatia" (from parts of Herzegovina, abandoned in 1994 with the Washington Agreement).

Alija Izetbegović (8 August 1925 – 19 October 2003) was a Bosnian politician and political theorist who served as the president of the presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1990 to 1996. He later served as the first chairman of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1996 to 1998, and then briefly in 2000. He was also the founder and first president of the Party of Democratic Action.

Shortly after his term began, the country's Serb community revolted and created the Republika Srpska, attempting to prevent the secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Yugoslavia, which would lead to the outbreak of the Bosnian War. Izetbegović led the Bosniak forces initially alongside the Croat forces, until a separate war erupted between them. Relations between the two sides were resolved in the Washington Agreement, which he signed with Croatian president Franjo Tuđman.