Neum is the only town situated along Bosnia and Herzegovina's 20-kilometre (12 mi) coastline,[1] making it the country's only access to the Adriatic Sea.

[3] The municipality includes the town of Neum (municipal seat) and several villages:[4] Babin Do, Borut, Brestica, Broćanac, Brštanica, Cerovica, Cerovo, Crnoglav, Dobri Do, Dobrovo, Donji Drijen, Donji Zelenikovac, Dubravica, Duži, Glumina, Gornje Hrasno, Gradac, Hotanj Hutovski, Hutovo, Kiševo, Moševići, Prapratnica, Previš, Rabrani, Vinine and Žukovica.

The Neum corridor dates back to the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699, whereby the Republic of Ragusa was separated from the Dalmatian possessions of its rival Venice by two buffer zones ceded by Ragusa to the Ottoman Empire to prevent the possibility of Venice invading via land:[5][6] north of its territory is Neum and the bay of Klek, and south of its territory is Sutorina with the port of Herceg Novi on the Bay of Kotor, part of Montenegro since 1947 (later the topic of the now-resolved Sutorina dispute).

Instead, it stationed a warship to block access to the port of Neum until the Treaty of Berlin, which gave the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary in 1878.

Josip Broz Tito's federal Yugoslavia was founded on the principle, declared at the 1943 AVNOJ session in Jajce and comparatively well-respected by the Đilas commission in 1945, of establishing the federative republics in their borders of 1878, which is why the Neum enclave is now part of independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, including most of Klek (Ponta Kleka, Rep Kleka), the two islets Veliki and Mali Školj and the rock of Lopata in the Bay of Klek.

[citation needed] The construction and opening in 2022 of the Pelješac Bridge, which bypasses Neum entirely, has significance for Croatia's integrity and also for its future Schengen Area membership and the EU as a whole.

There are plans to build a seaport, rail and a motorway and thus the Croatian bridge must have a high clearance according to the view of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Bosniak political parties.

Due to the above, the Republic of Croatia has significantly increased the height of the bridge by adapting it to ships whose dimensions cannot enter the Bay of Neum at all.

[citation needed] The climate of the area is Mediterranean, characterized by mild winters and dry summers, with three times more rain in the rainier than in the drier months, during which the mean precipitation does not exceed 40 mm (1.6 in).

Vegetation is the evergreen Mediterranean type, and subtropical flora (palm trees, agaves, cacti) grow in Neum and its surroundings.

Una-Sana  Central Bosnia Posavina  Herzegovina-Neretva Tuzla  West Herzegovina Zenica-Doboj  Sarajevo Bosnian Podrinje Canton 10