|
|
|
Map of Europe |
Email this citationCIAO DATE: 07/04
The Continuing Challenge Of Refugee Return In Bosnia & Herzegovina
December 13, 2002
Abstract
In preparing for and orchestrating the proximity talks that marked the end of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH), the authors of the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA) placed a particularly high priority on the return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their pre-war homes. Annex 7 of the DPA is devoted entirely to ensuring the right of return. The peacemakers hoped that such return might one day reverse the territorial, political and national partition of the country that the DPA otherwise recognised.
While the first four years of peace saw large-scale return by both refugees and internally displaced persons to areas where their own nations were a majority, the chauvinist agendas and entrenched power structures of the nationalist parties kept "minority" returns to a minimum. By 2000, however, there was a surprising reversal. Not only has this trend continued, as ordinary people seek to return to their pre-war homes in ever-larger numbers, but it has begun to alter the prevailing political climate in much of the country.
