ABSTRACT
The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement between the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the product of several years of diplomatic negotiations. It marked the formal end of war in the Balkans and heralded the beginning of an ambitious public diplomacy initiative to build a democratic foundation and civil society. What made the task particularly daunting was that the former communist nations had few if any organizations that were not government sponsored. Nonprofit civil society organizations were needed, and needed quickly; a stipulation of the peace agreement called for parliamentary and presidential elections for the newly created nations.
