ABSTRACT

Since the outbreak of war in 1992, the fledgling nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has endured the trauma of armed conflict, displacement of approximately 1.8 million people and continuing polarization of its existing population along the ethnic divides of Serb, Croat and Bosniak (Muslim Slav) created by the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. The war was brought to an end in November 1995 with the ‘General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ reached in Dayton, Ohio. As the country struggles to come to terms with the consequences of a war that resulted in the deaths of at least 100,000 people, it also faces the challenge of much needed political and economic reform.1