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Bosnia and Herzegovina - International Forces and Organizations

IFOR
SFOR
OSCE Mission
Icelandic Force

See also:

IFOR - Implementation Forces

by Jens Pattke, 27 March 2004

UN International Forces in Bosnia, that are there deployed according to the Dayton agreement (called Implememntation Foces, with the task to implement the agreement), use an emblem consisting of a shield per pale white with letters IFOR vertiaclly, and blue with white letters IFOR in cyrillc. It seems that both dark blue (as in NATO flag), and light blue (as in UN flag) was used. Possibly it have been used as a flag, but I have never seen it so. The flags used by IFOR are just the UN flag and the flags of their respective countries.
Zeljko Heimer, 4 July 1996

Latter in 1996 the flag with this emblem was reported, together with two emblems of NATO organization on it.
Zeljko Heimer, 8 November 1996

SFOR - Stabilization Forces

by Jens Pattke, 27 March 2004

Since 1 January 1997 the mandate of IFOR finished, and the forces were renamed according to their new task - Stabilization Forces. Their flag is much more used, changing only the initials in it.
Zeljko Heimer

"OSCE - Organization of European Security and Cooperation" Mission

by Zeljko Heimer, 24 April 2000

Browsing the Net I noticed the flag of the OSCE Mission to B&H on their site. Is it a simple logo on bedsheet, but still, it is obvious from the photos there that it is in use as flag (See: <www.oscebih.org>).
The logo is consisting of the OSCE logo - four blue squares cointaining lowercase initials of the organization in white, combined with two light blue triangles, no doubt representing Bosnia and Hezegovina, above the logo is written "Mission to" and below "Bosnia and Herzegovina" in two rows. Most probably ratio is 2:3, though I guess it is nowhere defined. The logo must be younger then the current B&H flag (on which it is based), even if the Mission must have been present in B&H much longer. IIRC, OSCE-BiH is responsible among other things, for organization of fair elections.
OSCE stands for Organization of European Security and Cooperation" (in French). The Organization is sucsessor of the former Conference on European Security and Cooperation (CSCE), the change from conference to (permanent) organization happened in early 1990's.
Zeljko Heimer, 24 April 2000

Icelandic Force

I forgot to say that in the Congress was presented a flag with the flags of all nations with contingents in Bosnia. All were well know except perhaps the flag of Icelandic force: the flag is green with the map of the island in center. The map is colorized with the iceland national flag. Below the map is a red ribbon with the white inscription "Iceland".
Jaume Olle', 11 November 1998

Iceland has a medical team with the peacekeeping forces in Bosnia. The country does not have any military forces at all (coast guard and fisheries inspection are civilian), so the flag is not really a military flag.
Jan Oskar Engene,, 11 November 1998