Bosnia and Herzegovina

Citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is governed by the Law on Citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina, imposed by the High Representative on 16 December 1997 and in force since 1 January 1998 (Official Gazette of BiH nos. 4/97, 13/99, 41/02, 6/03, 14/03, 82/05, 43/09, 76/09 and 87/13, together with two Constitutional Court instruments published at nos. 99/11 and 85/12). The operative text is the official consolidated text published in Official Gazette of BiH no. 22/16, which renumbered the whole Act; the article numbers used below are those of the consolidated text, and readers working from older translations should note that the pre-consolidation numbering, which contained lettered articles such as 11a, 12a and 29a, no longer matches. BiH citizenship always exists alongside the citizenship of one of the two entities — the Federation of BiH (Official Gazette of FBiH nos. 34/16 and 98/16 – corrigendum) or Republika Srpska (Official Gazette of RS no. 59/14) — but it is the state citizenship that matters internationally.

The routes relevant to applicants of Bosnian origin are:

• Descent (Article 6). By its terms Article 6 applies to a child born after the entry into force of the Constitution on 14 December 1995, although the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the entity ministries treat 1 January 1998 as the working dividing line and apply the earlier republic law to births before that date. A child acquires citizenship automatically if both parents were BiH citizens at the time of birth, wherever born (Article 6(a)); if one parent was a citizen and the child was born in BiH (Article 6(b)); or if one parent was a citizen and the child would otherwise be stateless (Article 6(c)). A child born abroad with only one BiH-citizen parent acquires citizenship by descent on condition that an application for registration of the citizenship is filed with the competent authority before the child turns 23 (Article 6(d), in this form since the amendments adopted on 5 November 2013).
• Confirmation of citizenship acquired under earlier law. Persons born before 1 January 1998 are dealt with under the Law on Citizenship of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (consolidated text, Official Gazette of RBiH no. 30/96). Anyone who acquired citizenship under that law — including by descent — is a citizen from the moment of birth even if never registered (Article 6 of that law), and may have the facts of birth and citizenship entered in the registers at any time ("naknadni upis", governed by the Instruction published in Official Gazette of BiH no. 30/16). This is a declaratory recognition procedure, not naturalisation.
• Re-acquisition (Article 14). A former citizen whose citizenship ceased by renunciation or release in order to acquire or retain another citizenship may apply for resumption if he holds approved permanent residence in BiH, or approved temporary residence for at least one year immediately before the application. The age and three-year permanent-residence conditions of ordinary naturalisation (Article 9(1)(a) and (b)) are waived; the remaining conditions of Article 9 apply, including renunciation of the citizenship currently held unless a bilateral agreement provides otherwise.
• Facilitated naturalisation by origin (Article 13). Emigrants who have returned to BiH, and the first and second generation of their descendants who have returned, are exempt from the permanent-residence and renunciation conditions of Article 9(1)(b) and (f). The other conditions of Article 9(1) continue to apply, including knowledge of the language and script, a clean criminal record, secure income, settled tax obligations, the signed declaration and a valid guarantee of acquisition. Their spouses benefit from a partial facilitation (Article 13(2)).

There is no grandparent or great-grandparent registration route of the kind offered by some other European states. Transmission is strictly parent-to-child, and the anchor question in every file is whether the parent was a BiH (or predecessor) citizen at the moment of the applicant's birth. Because Yugoslav-era and Bosnian citizenship arose by operation of law in most family configurations, a parent who was never entered in a BiH register may nevertheless have been a citizen from birth; multi-generational claims are therefore handled by documenting each generation in turn — first entering the grandparent's and parent's citizenship in the registers where necessary, then the applicant's. The chain does not, however, run back indefinitely: there was no Bosnian citizenship before the socialist federation, the Kingdom having had a single Yugoslav citizenship with no republic tier, so the earliest link in any BiH chain is the republic citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina created by the federal legislation of 1945-1946.

The main breaks in transmission are the registration deadlines that have applied, in various forms, to children born abroad where only one parent was a citizen: the FPRY Nationality Act of 1 July 1946 required registration with the competent Yugoslav authority abroad within five years of birth where the child was born abroad and the parents lived abroad with him (Article 4(4)); the SFRY law of 1976 required registration with a competent Yugoslav authority, or the taking up of permanent residence in Yugoslavia, before age 18 (Article 5); the RBiH law applicable to those born before 1 January 1998 required registration before age 23, or a longer stay in BiH for upbringing or schooling, with a statelessness safeguard in Article 5(2); and the current law requires an application before age 23 (Article 6(d)). Where both parents were citizens, or where — for pre-1998 births — one parent was a BiH citizen, the other was a citizen of the former SFRY or stateless, and the child was born abroad (Article 4(1)(3) and (4) of the RBiH law), citizenship arose automatically with no deadline at all; this covers a very large share of diaspora families. A person whose chain is broken can still fall back on Article 13: children and grandchildren of Bosnian emigrants who return to BiH may be admitted to citizenship without the permanent-residence requirement and while keeping their existing nationality.

Under Ottoman rule the population was covered by the Ottoman Nationality Law of 1869; after the Austro-Hungarian occupation of 1878 the inhabitants continued to be regarded as subjects of the Sultan, and only with the annexation of 1908 and the Land Statute of 1910 did they hold a distinct Bosnian-Herzegovinian provincial affiliation — they were neither Austrian nor Hungarian citizens. From 1918 Bosnia and Herzegovina belonged to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (from 1929 Yugoslavia), whose Citizenship Law of 21 September 1928 created a single nationality for the entire Kingdom (Article 1). That law followed the gender rules typical of its era: a legitimate child of a subject acquired nationality regardless of place of birth and an illegitimate child took the nationality of its subject mother (Article 7); a minor child followed its father, or in the absence of a father its mother (Article 42); an alien woman acquired her husband's nationality on marriage unless she had declared retention of her own beforehand (Article 10); and a woman lost her nationality by marrying a foreigner unless his law gave her nothing or she had retained hers by marriage contract or declaration (Article 29).

Socialist Yugoslavia introduced a two-tier system: a federal citizenship (Law on Citizenship of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia of 23 August 1945, Official Gazette of DFY no. 64/45 of 28 August 1945, re-enacted as the FPRY Nationality Act No. 370/331 of 1 July 1946, published in Official Gazette of FPRY no. 54 of 5 July 1946; replaced by federal laws of 1964, Official Gazette of SFRY no. 38/64, and of 24 December 1976, Official Gazette of SFRY no. 58/76) and a republic citizenship. Article 37 of the 1946 Act allocated republic citizenship, with effect from 28 August 1945, according to the place in which a person held domiciliary rights or community membership; the republic tier was then regulated by the Bosnian laws of 1950 (Official Gazette of NRBiH no. 5/50), 1965 (Official Gazette of SRBiH no. 6/65) and 1977 (Official Gazette of SRBiH no. 10/77). From 1945 transmission by descent was gender-neutral, subject to transitional asymmetries for marriages contracted after 6 April 1941 (Article 35 of the 1946 Act). Where the parents held different republic citizenships, the 1946 Act let them settle the child's by agreement; failing agreement it followed their joint domicile at birth, then their closest material or legal ties, and where the parents lived apart it followed the republic of birth for a child born in Yugoslavia or the republic of the parent with whom the child lived for a child born abroad. Republic citizenship had little practical significance until the dissolution, when it became the criterion of state succession.

The independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina regulated citizenship by a decree with the force of law enacted by the Presidency on 6 October 1992 (Official Gazette of RBiH no. 18/92, amended at nos. 11/93, 27/93, 13/94, 15/94 and 26/96; consolidated text no. 30/96). It continued the citizenry of the Socialist Republic (Article 28) and additionally conferred citizenship by operation of law on every former-SFRY citizen who had registered residence in BiH on 6 April 1992 (Article 30) — a rule which, as originally enacted in 1992, also required five uninterrupted years of residence before that date, the unconditional version dating from the 1993 amendment. The Dayton Constitution, in force since 14 December 1995, guarantees in Article I/7(c) that all persons who were RBiH citizens immediately before its entry into force are BiH citizens, and leaves post-6-April-1992 naturalisations to the Parliamentary Assembly. Article 41 of the current law goes further than the Constitution, extending the guarantee to all persons who were RBiH citizens up to 6 April 1992, and subjects only naturalisations granted between 6 April 1992 and 1 January 2006 to review (Articles 43 and 44, with Article 45 consolidating cases where citizenship was granted more than once).

Historical losses matter for descent chains, and the pre-1945 regime was not benign. Article 21 of the 1928 Kingdom law listed six grounds of loss: release (Article 27), absence (Article 28 — permanent residence abroad, over 21 years of age, and thirty years without fulfilling any obligation towards the Kingdom), marriage (Article 29), legitimation (Article 30), declination (Article 31) and deprivation (Articles 32 and 33, Article 32 covering enlistment in a foreign army or entry into foreign civil service without permission where the person then ignored a ministerial order to leave). Loss by absence was therefore inherited rather than invented by the socialist state: Article 39 of the 1946 Act let persons who had lost nationality by absence under Article 28 of the 1928 law recover it by declaration within one year.

The FPRY framework added collective and punitive losses. A separate Act of 23 August 1945, distinct from the citizenship law of the same date, deprived officers and non-commissioned officers of the former royal army who refused to return, and members of collaborationist formations who had fled abroad, subject to an escape by declaration of willingness to return within two months of the announcement that repatriation was complete. Article 16 of the 1946 Act permitted deprivation of nationals belonging ethnically to a people whose state had waged war against the FPRY for wartime disloyalty, and Article 18 extended such an order to spouse and children unless they proved that they had no connection with the person and had behaved innocently, or that they belonged ethnically to one of the peoples of the FPRY. Loss by absence under Article 15 required three cumulative conditions — continuous residence outside the FPRY; fifteen years from the person's eighteenth birthday during which no public duty was performed towards the FPRY; and no appearance before an FPRY authority abroad or written report to the federal Ministry of the Interior in the preceding five years — and it extended to children born and permanently resident abroad in the same position. It was not automatic: loss took effect only by an order of the federal Ministry of the Interior published in the Official Gazette and appealable at any time within two years, with the time limits running from 28 August 1945 (Articles 15 and 40). Under the 1964 and 1976 federal laws citizenship was lost by release (otpust), renunciation or deprivation only, while voluntary acquisition of a foreign citizenship did not of itself terminate Yugoslav citizenship — though many emigrants sought release because their host state demanded it when naturalising them.

The 1997 BiH law originally provided in former Article 17 for loss by operation of law upon voluntary acquisition of another citizenship absent a bilateral agreement, with a transitional rule in former Article 39(1) giving those who had acquired another citizenship earlier fifteen years from 1 January 1998 — that is, until 1 January 2013 — to renounce it. The Constitutional Court of BiH, in decision U-9/11 of 23 September 2011, held both provisions incompatible with Article I/7(b) and (d) of the Constitution. The Parliamentary Assembly failed to act within the six months allowed, and by the Court's ruling published in Official Gazette of BiH no. 85/12 of 29 October 2012 the two provisions ceased to have legal force the following day, on 30 October 2012, so they never took effect; the amendments of 2013 (Official Gazette of BiH no. 87/13 of 11 November 2013, in force from 19 November 2013) formally deleted them. Acquiring a foreign citizenship consequently does not cause loss of BiH citizenship, a position the Ministry of Civil Affairs confirms publicly. Today citizenship ceases only by renunciation, release, deprivation or international agreement (Article 18), and cannot be lost where the person would be left stateless except where it was obtained by fraud, false information or concealment of a relevant fact (Article 17, referring to Article 23(a)). Renunciation (Article 19) is open to adults living abroad who hold or are assured another citizenship, and the decision can be annulled if the assured citizenship is never acquired (Article 20); release (Article 21) is the counterpart for residents of BiH; deprivation (Article 23) covers six grounds, including fraud in the acquisition, citizenship acquired after the law's entry into force without the conditions of Articles 9 and 10 being met, voluntary service in foreign armed forces despite a legal prohibition, and convictions for conduct seriously harming BiH's vital interests. For chain purposes, what interrupts transmission is an ancestor's renunciation, release or deprivation effective before the next generation's birth, a child's inclusion in a parent's renunciation or release (Articles 19(2) and 22), or a missed registration deadline for a birth abroad.

BiH has no restitution scheme of the German or Austrian type for victims of Nazi-era or communist-era persecution. The function of a reparative route is performed by two provisions: Article 13, under which returned emigrants and their first- and second-generation descendants are admitted without the permanent-residence and renunciation requirements (a route that presupposes actually returning to BiH), and Article 14, in the law since the 2013 amendments and aimed at the large diaspora — particularly in Germany and Austria — who renounced BiH citizenship because their host state then required it. The Constitutional Court upheld the resumption conditions in decision U-19/22 of 19 January 2023, holding Article 14 read with Article 9(1)(c), (f) and (l) compatible with Articles I/7(b) and II/5 of the Constitution. The obstacle is not only the one-year residence condition: the decisive requirement in practice is renunciation of the citizenship currently held, which the Ministry of Civil Affairs describes as a mandatory condition for anyone who has naturalised in Germany. The applicant in that case put the affected group at some 93,000 people and stated that between 2013 and 2022 no application for re-acquisition had been granted. A bill tabled in the Parliamentary Assembly on 18 May 2026 would remove the one-year prior-residence requirement; as at 22 August 2026 it remains in procedure and is not law.

The most important trap for descendants is the age-23 registration deadline for persons born abroad with only one BiH-citizen parent — both under the current Article 6(d) and, for those born before 1 January 1998, under Article 5 of the RBiH law. By contrast, no deadline applies where both parents were citizens or where, for pre-1998 births, the other parent was a citizen of the former SFRY; such persons are citizens from birth and may register at any age. A further special feature is the review regime for naturalisations granted between 6 April 1992 and 1 January 2006 (Articles 43 and 44), under which the Ministry re-examined and in some cases revoked wartime and post-war naturalisations. In the Brčko District, a BiH citizen who already holds one entity's citizenship remains a citizen of that entity unless he applies to change it, while those who have declared no entity citizenship and those who naturalise while resident in the District choose (Article 30). Entity citizenship, unlike state citizenship, also changes on moving between the entities if the person so wishes (Article 29).

Article I/7(d) of the Constitution and Article 4 of the citizenship law permit BiH citizens to hold another citizenship provided a bilateral agreement approved by the Parliamentary Assembly exists with the state concerned. Three such agreements are in force: with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia — today applied with Serbia as successor — signed in Belgrade on 29 October 2002 (Official Gazette of BiH – International Treaties no. 4/03); with Sweden, signed in Sarajevo on 20 December 2004 and ratified by the BiH Presidency on 23 February 2006 following the Parliamentary Assembly's consent of 31 January 2006 (no. 2/06); and with Croatia, signed in Sarajevo on 29 March 2007 (no. 10/11). Only the Serbian treaty facilitates acquisition, requiring 18 years of age, three years' registered residence in the other contracting state or one year for the spouse of one of its citizens, and clean criminal-record and expulsion conditions; the Croatian and Swedish agreements essentially permit the double status, save that Croatian citizens are excused proof of knowledge of the language and script. The Constitution adds that dual citizens may vote in BiH and in the entities only if BiH is their country of residence.

In practice the bilateral-agreement requirement now bites far less than the constitutional text suggests. Since the loss-by-operation-of-law provisions ceased to have force on 30 October 2012, a BiH citizen who voluntarily acquires German, Austrian, American or any other citizenship does not lose BiH citizenship, whether or not an agreement exists — the Ministry of Civil Affairs states this expressly, citing the Constitutional Court. Applicants by descent and persons registering citizenship acquired at birth are never asked to renounce anything: recognition is declaratory. Renunciation of the existing citizenship is demanded only in the naturalisation-type procedures (Articles 9, 10 and 14), and even there it is excused where a bilateral agreement applies (Article 16), where release is not permitted, or where it cannot reasonably be required — an exception the Ministry applies narrowly. The Article 13 emigrant route is expressly exempt.

BiH citizenship is proved by a citizenship certificate (uvjerenje o državljanstvu) issued by the authority that keeps the birth register or book of citizens, or by a BiH passport (Articles 38 and 39(1)). For a descent claim the applicant must establish the parent's citizenship at the time of the applicant's birth, together with identity and filiation. In consular and municipal practice this means: a valid identity document; the foreign birth certificate, either on the international (CIEC) form or on a national form bearing an apostille, not older than six months; proof of the parents' BiH citizenship, by certified copy of a valid BiH passport or identity card or by citizenship certificates not older than six months; marriage certificates where names have changed; and, for late registration, a certificate of registered-residence history for the applicant or the parents. Under the Instruction of 5 April 2016 (Official Gazette of BiH no. 30/16, published on 26 April 2016), persons who acquired citizenship by operation of law through residence on 6 April 1992 also submit proof of former-SFRY citizenship — a citizenship certificate, passport, identity card, military or seaman's booklet or another document issued by the former SFRY authorities — and a residence document issued from the official residence records. Where the applicant was a minor on 6 April 1992, at least one parent acquired citizenship on the basis of residence on that date, and proof of residence is unavailable, Article 2(6) of the Instruction allows the fact to be established from the parents' registered residence and from school and health booklets, household lists and statements of the applicant or a family member. More generally, Article 39(4) of the law obliges the authorities to allow other means of proof, including statements given by or for the person concerned, where documented data are unavailable or cannot be obtained within a reasonable time.

BiH has been a party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention since 6 March 1992 by succession, so foreign public documents generally need an apostille rather than full legalisation, and civil-status extracts issued on the international form are accepted without one. In practice registrars ask for an apostille on anything that is not an international-form extract. All foreign-language documents must be translated by a court-sworn interpreter into one of the official languages of BiH.

For descent and late-registration cases the competent authority is the municipal or city administration: applications go to the body of the applicant's residence or temporary stay in BiH, failing that of the parents' last residence in BiH, failing that of the place where the parents' birth or citizenship is registered, while a person already entered in a BiH birth register applies to the authority of that place of registration (Instruction no. 30/16, Article 3). Applicants living abroad file through a BiH diplomatic-consular mission, which forwards the file; Article 33 of the law provides for consular filing of applications to acquire, renounce or be released from citizenship, while for late registration of an existing citizenship the consular channel rests on the Instruction and on consular practice. Where the competent authority establishes that the conditions of Articles 6, 7 or 8 are met, the citizenship is entered in the birth register without any separate decision (Article 39(2)) and takes effect on registration (Article 32(2)). Late registration of pre-1998 acquisitions is granted by a decision (rješenje); a copy with the case file must go to the Ministry of Civil Affairs within three days, the Ministry has 30 days to object, and in municipal practice the decision is served on the applicant only after the Ministry has answered or that period has expired. In the Federation, some municipalities route the 6 April 1992 residence category through the cantonal police administration instead. After entry, the person obtains the citizenship certificate and a personal identification number (JMB), and with these can apply for a BiH passport — in the country through the competent police authority, with IDDEEA personalising the document, or abroad at a consulate. A BiH identity card is issued only in BiH, by the police authority of the place of registered residence, and is therefore not available to an applicant who has no registered residence in the country.

Naturalisation-type applications (Articles 9 to 14, including the emigrant and re-acquisition routes) are decided by the competent entity authorities — in the Federation the Federal Ministry of the Interior, in Republika Srpska the Ministry of Administration and Local Self-Government, in the Brčko District the Government's Public Register Department. Except for decisions under Articles 6, 7, 8 and 42, those decisions must be sent to the Ministry of Civil Affairs within three weeks and take effect two months after despatch unless the Ministry finds the statutory conditions unmet, in which case the case returns to the entity authority for reconsideration (Articles 31(2) and 32). The Ministry itself decides everything not allocated to the entities, including renunciation, deprivation and acquisition under an international agreement (Article 31(1)); admission of a person of special benefit to BiH requires a consensus decision of the Council of Ministers (Articles 15 and 31(3)). The competent authorities must decide within 60 days of a complete application, refusals must state written reasons, and an administrative dispute lies against the decision (Article 34). There is no oath and no test for descent claimants; ordinary naturalisation requires sufficient knowledge of the language and script of one of the constituent peoples and a signed declaration accepting the legal system and constitutional order of BiH (Article 9(1)(c) and (k)).

The statutory deadline for citizenship decisions is 60 days from a complete application (Article 34(1)), with entity naturalisation decisions taking legal effect a further two months after despatch to the Ministry of Civil Affairs (Article 32(2)). In practice, a straightforward registration by descent under Article 6 through a consulate and municipality is reported to take from a few weeks to a few months. Late registration under the RBiH law — the route most diaspora applicants actually use — realistically runs longer, because the municipal decision period is followed by the Ministry's 30-day objection period before the decision is served, with consular forwarding in both directions on top; two to three months from a complete file is a fair floor, and document procurement usually dominates the timetable. Naturalisation, emigrant-route and re-acquisition cases are reported to run several months or longer. Passports are issued within a statutory 30 days in-country, or 72 hours in the expedited procedure; through a mission the statutory period is 60 days, with about 30 days reported in practice.

Official fees are modest for descent claims, and all of the following are governmental charges:

• Municipal administrative taxes, which vary by municipality and are small: a citizenship certificate costs 4 KM (about 2 EUR) in Sarajevo Centar and in Jajce, a domestic birth extract 3-4 KM and an international-form extract 10 KM (about 5 EUR), with postage charged separately (about 5 KM within BiH, 9.40 KM to European countries, 10 KM to the United States and Canada). Some municipalities charge no administrative tax at all for the late-registration decision itself.
• Consular fees, which follow the state tariff of 11 February 2026, expressed in the currency of the mission. At the Embassy in Washington: registration of a birth 12 USD, determination of a JMB 12 USD, certificates and extracts obtained through the mission 30 USD plus 25 USD delivery, an application for acquisition of citizenship 238 USD. The Embassy in Berlin charges 6 EUR for forwarding a late-registration request.
• Passports: 50 KM (about 26 EUR) for an adult in-country, with ten years' validity (40 KM for ages 3-18, 30 KM under 3), plus a 5 KM administrative tax in Republika Srpska and a further 200 KM for the 72-hour procedure. Through a mission the cost is higher — Washington 115 USD plus 25 USD delivery, or 412 USD plus delivery in the expedited procedure; Berlin 129 EUR, plus 250 EUR for expedited issue.
• Cessation of citizenship: the Ministry of Civil Affairs requires payment of 800 KM (about 409 EUR) with a renunciation application, reduced to 200 KM (about 102 EUR) for persons who hold or are acquiring the citizenship of a former-SFRY state. Consular handling adds mission-specific charges (Washington: 298 USD for the renunciation statement, 488 USD for the decision accepting it unless the Ministry's decision provides otherwise, 179 USD for a release application).

Recognition of citizenship acquired at birth attracts no state acquisition fee beyond these administrative and consular charges.

This page is not updated regularly, and it may not reflect the current position. It is a general account of Bosnian citizenship law: statutes are amended, time limits expire, and the practice of the competent authorities moves without the legislation moving with it. Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here is an assessment of your own family’s position.

Whether there is a claim in your case turns on names, dates and documents that no general page can take into account. The questionnaire is where we ask about them, and a lawyer in our citizenship team reads the answers.