The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) entity government adopted the request for the legalisation of same-sex marriages at its Friday session. the move was welcomed by the LGBTI advocacy group Sarajevo Open Centre who offered expert assistance to the government in order to adopt the necessary changes as soon as possible.

“The said item was on the session agenda and it was adopted in the same form as it was proposed,” FBiH Prime Minister Fadil Novalic said.

He added the entity government is following in the EU footsteps.

“We take seriously everything we face on our path on our EU path,” Novalic noted.

As proposed by the FBiH Justice Ministry, the government will form an Inter-ministerial working group which will analyse the regulations which would allow same-sex couples to realise their rights stemming from the European Human Rights Convention and propose regulations which need to be adopted on the territory of the FBiH.

Bosnia’s independent civil society organisation campaigning for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) rights, the Sarajevo Open Centre (SOC) welcomed this move by the FBiH government and offered their assistance in the work of the government and the working group.

According to their research, over 80 percent of same-sex couples in the country wish to formalise their domestic partnership but their partnership is in no way recognised by the state.

The Centre recalled that in 2016 they created a model of the law on domestic partnership of same-sex couples for the territory of Bosnia's both semi-autonomous entities, the FBiH and the Republika Srpska (RS) entity which they suggest the government considers in their work.