Ambassador Jakob Finci, president of the Jewish community of Sarajevo, was born in an Italian concentration camp during World War II and was evacuated after the Italian armistice with the Allies. Amb. Finci grew up in Sarajevo and attended high school there. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Sarajevo in 1966 and has, over the decades, become a prominent public figure in the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At the beginning of 1991, La Benevolencija, a Jewish humanitarian agency was founded by Holocaust survivors and Amb. Finci was elected as the first vice president. During the war in Bosnia, Amb. Finci became President of La Benevolencija and Vice President of the coordination body of Bosnian NGOs, and in August 1995 he became the first elected President of the Jewish Community of Bosnia Herzegovina. During the war, La Benevolencija was the only Bosnian humanitarian organization working as an implementing partner for The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and was very successful in helping all citizens of Sarajevo and Bosnia Herzegovina on a non-sectarian basis.

Amb. Finci was one of the founding fathers of the Interreligious Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina and for two years the first President of the Interreligious council assuming the same function again in 2003. In February 2000, he was elected Chairman of the Association of Citizens “Truth and Reconciliation” established with main goal to establish Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Bosnia Herzegovina, and in February 2001 High Representative appointed him to Chair the Constitutional Commission of Federal Parliament. Amb. Finci is former Bosnia and Herzegovina ambassador to Switzerland.

More recently, Amb. Finci and Dervo Sejdić, a prominent Bosnian Roma and member of the member of Bosnia’s Roma Council, launched an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights on the basis that Bosnia’s Constitution violates the European Convention on Human Rights. A judgement was handed down in their favor in September 2009.