Transitional Administration in Bosnia

Background  

In 1992, a bloody war began in Bosnia after two major communities in the Eastern Europe region joined hands in calling for seccession from the problem plagued Republic of Yugoslavia (Caplan, n.d). The Bosnian Serbs constituted a third of the country’s entire population with the Muslim and Bosnian Croats making up for two thirds of the country’s population. The Serbs attempted to wipe out the Croats and Muslims, so as to create a pure Serbian state, leading to a war that claimed the lives of over 250,000 people (Bellamy & Williams, 2010, p. 267). In 1993, the war was compounded by infighting between the Muslims and Croats who had joined hands in fightinhg aginst the Serbs. The US led the way in looking for a peaceful solution in theis bloody conflict which captured the world’s attention for all the wrong reasons (Chesterman, 2004 p.5) (van Willige, 2013 p. 3). This essay is a literature review looking into the outcomes of the Dayton Peace Agreement brokered by theUS, UN, EU, and NATO in 1995, in an effort to enforce peace in the region.

Discussion

The aim of the Dayton Peace Agreement was for the provision of a conclusive blueprint essential for post violence reconstruction ensuring that both the Croat Muslim Federation and the Republika Srpska existed in harmony with each other (Chandler, 2006 p. 18). However, this peace agreement failed to move with the pace it was expected to progress with (Ljubojevic, 2010 p. 80). This arose from a number of challenges, one major challenge being that the elections were organized in a rigid and taut election calendar which failed to allow for a new political dispensation to rise (Zurn, Nollkaemper & Peerenboom, 2012, p. 146). This resulted in a consolidation of power by the same nationalists that brought about the blood shed.

Reflections

Upon election, nationalist party members witfully delayed and more so undermined the full implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement (Ingram, n.d). Nationalists ensured that the central government organs were weak, discouraged refugees from returning to their homes and repelled pressure from the international community to have Bosnia’s War criminals tried (Crocker & Hampson, 2007, p. 664). The Peace Implementation Council and Office of the High Representative had to take very uncharateristic measure so as to ensure that the country did not degenerate to full blown war again. As much as Bosnia looks safe from the inside it still bears deep scars of war and the UN has to be querried on its blueprint for the peace agreement as much has left to be answered.

Bibliography

Bellamy, A. J. & Williams, P. (2010) Understanding peacekeeping. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Caplan, R. (n.d) International Transitional Administration (ITA). [Online]  Available from: [Accessed: 10th November 2012].

Chandler, D. (2006) State-building in Bosnia: The limits of ‘informal trusteeship’ International Journal of Peace Studies, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2006.

Chesterman, S. (2004) You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State-Buiding. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crocker, C. A. & Hampson,  F. O. (2007) Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World. Washington D.C: United states Institute of Peace.

Ingram, L. (n.d) Neotrusteeship in Bosnia. Review digest: human rights & post- war reconstruction 68. [Online]  Available from: http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/researchdigest/reconstruction/bosnianeo.pdf [Accessed: 10th November 2012].

Ljubojevic, A. (2010) “ Tommorrow people, where is your past?” Transitional justice mechanism and dealing with past in Serbia and Croatia. International Journal of Rule of Law, Transitional Justice And Human Rights, Vol. 1,  78-85.

Solioz C. (2012) Post-Dayton Bosnia: the other path. [Online]  Available from: http://www.opendemocracy.net/christophe-solioz/post-dayton-bosnia-other-path [Accessed: 10^th November 2012].

van Willige, Niels. (2013) Peacebuilding and International Administration: The Cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. New York: Routledge.   (van Willige, 2013 p. 3)

Zurn, M., Nollkaemper, A. & Peerenboom, R. (2012) Rule of Law Dynamics: In an Era of International and Transnational Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University P