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Brcko District (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Brcko District of Bosnia of Herzegovina, Distikt Brcko Bosni i Hercegovini

Overview
Previous Coat of Arms

See also:

Municipalities:

Zovik

Overview

A few days ago, the city of Brcko in Bosnia & Herzegovina was proclaimed to be a separate district, apart from the Serbian Republic as well as the (Moslem-Croatian) Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Jan Zrzavy , 10 March 2000

According to the OHR website (defunct):
Article 2 : Name and Seat -
The name of the District is: "The Brcko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina". The seat of the District is the town of Brcko.
Article 3 : Flag and Coat-of Arms -
There shall be no flag and Coat-of-Arms for the District other than the flag and Coat-of-Arms of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Article 4 : Seal -
The District shall have a round seal with the text "Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Brcko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina" in both the Cyrillic and Latinic alphabet
Nitesh Dave , 13 March 2000

At <www.ohr.int> one can find "Brcko Arbitration - Arbitral Tribunal for Dispute over Inter-Entity Boundary in Brcko Area - Final Award: ANNEX", 5 March 1999 with its article 11 quoting:

"11.Symbols
The District Assembly shall determine all symbols for the District, provided that all such symbols shall be politically and ethnically neutral and subject to final approval by the Supervisor. There shall be no specific flag for the District other than the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The flags of both entities may be flown within the District, but the flag of one entity will not be flown without the other being flown on essentially equal terms. Both the Latinic and Cyrillic alphabets will be used on essentially' equal terms for all official purposes. Any citizen of the District shall have the right to request the issuance of official documents in any of the three officially-recognized languages and shall have the right to use any such language in official and all other correspondence, The District government and the Supervisor shall be responsible for issuance of a District identification card."

So, no flag for Brcko at all!
Zeljko Heimer , 5 May 2000

I have some useful information on the Brcko District of BIH. The ones I have from Brcko Dictrict Mayor Mr. Sinisa Kisic':
1. Full name is: Brcko Disctict of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Distrikt Brcko Bosni i Hercegovini - written both in Croat and Serb).
2. The only Flag and CoA of the District are the Bosnian-Herzegovinian ones. There are no separate symbols for the District as for today. There is also Bosnian CoA on the Brcko District Official Seal.
3. CoA on the web, entitled as the Previous Coat of Arms is the present CoA of the City of Brcko (as used on the City Map). I do not know if there is separate flag for the City of Brcko.
Krzysztof Kurzeja, 7 November 2000

Concering Krzysztof Kurzeja contribution:
1) I believe that it is right in English. The Croat and Serb (and Bosnian - three languages are official) version is somewhere wrong as it does not make sence gramatically. At the moment I don't have the full name by hand to quote is correctly, though.
2) That is correct and in agreement with the legislation establishing the District.
3) I guess that the previous CoA still klings on on various stationery. However, that CoA is more then obviously Serb in symbolic, and as such I quite doubt that it is retained. It is exactly due to such problems that "no-emblems" policy was adopted for the District. I am not sure that there is in fact such entity as "City of Brcko" within the District at all. Nither do I know if there is separate flag for the City of Brcko , but I believe that there was some kind of flag that went along the CoA. There would be no flag today, following the same arguments as above.
Zeljko Heimer, 8 November 2000

After the Dayton Agreement in 1995 the status of Brcko was left unsolved for the time being. The arbitration tribunal was working on the issue for the next few years, and finally in 2000 the decision was made that Brcko District shall be formed as a special unit of B&H that shall be nither part of Srpska nor the (Croat-Muslim) Federation. and this status is determined and quite firmly fixed in the legislation, and I believe there are no indications that the issue shall be opened for rearrangement any time soon. Indeed, Brcko seems to be probably the most prosperous community in B&H today, thanks at least partially to the special status.
The statutes of the District explicitly state that the District shall have no symbols of its own. The state flag of the B&H is used only. The use of the entity flags is allowed, but when one is shown the other must be shown as well. (Enitities are the R. Srpska and the Federation, of course.)
Zeljko Heimer, 19 May 2004

Previous Coat of Arms

by Zeljko Heimer , 11 March 2000

I haven't heard the news. In any case, the only emblem of Brcko known to be is the CoA of arms of the Serb municipality . It is possible that the flag is a banner of arms, as usual in modern Serb heraldry, but I fail to see what would that look like in this case. Somehow, I doubt that this CoA shall be used by the "denationalized" area.
Zeljko Heimer , 11 March 2000