flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia, with its mixed ethnic population, never developed distinctive national symbols of its own. Under communist-led Yugoslavia from 1946 to 1991–92, for example, the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina simply used a red banner with a small version of the Yugoslav national flag in the canton. At the time independence was proclaimed on March 3, 1992, no flag existed that was acceptable to the country’s Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats. The Bosnian-dominated government therefore adopted what it hoped would be a neutral symbol from the far past. It chose the coat of arms used by King Stjepan Tomaš (reigned 1443–61), which it attributed to the greatest medieval Bosnian ruler, Tvrtko I (1377–91). That blue shield with a white diagonal stripe separating six golden fleurs-de-lis was placed in the centre of a white flag. The artistic rendition, officially adopted on May 4, 1992, was created by Zvonimir Bebek.

This flag was rejected by many Croats and Serbs as the nation slipped into civil war. Peace accords signed in Dayton, Ohio, U.S., in late 1995 recognized the division of the country between the Serb Republic and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, often called the Croat-Muslim federation. Each state had its own symbols, and the Croats continued to use the Croatian flag in preference to the federation flag, but the republic’s flag of 1992 was still recognized internationally.

The 1995 accords called for the eventual creation of a flag to replace the 1992 design, but the national legislature was ineffectual in this regard. Thus the United Nations established a new flag (February 4, 1998) that could not be symbolically linked to a single ethnic, religious, or political group.