On this day 79 years ago, the ZAVNOBiH antifascist liberation movement gathered in its first session in the western town of Mrkonjic Grad and passed a decision restoring the country's statehood within its historic borders, which is marked today as the Statehood Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The ZAVNOBIH council, counting a total of 247 councilors from all parts of the country, issued a proclamation to the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which said that “Bosnia and Herzegovina is a integral and indivisible state, neither Serbian nor Croatian or Muslim, but also Serbian and Muslim and Croatian, a twinned community in which full equality will be ensured for Muslims, Serbs and Croats, but also for all other peoples who live there.”

The significance of the session in Mrkonjic Grad lies in the fact that with these decisions, for the first time since 1463 when the country fell under the Ottoman rule, Bosnia and Herzegovina restored its statehood. Owing to this, Bosnia and Herzegovina entered the future Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) as one of the six republics, equal to the others.

The ZAVNOBiH movement passed another important decision on July 1, 1944, adopting the Declaration on the Rights of Citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which guaranteed freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and agreement, association and press, personal and property security of citizens, and freedom of private initiative in economic life, as well as equality between women and men.