ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand the challenges and failures of transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the 1992–1995 war. It presents how the model of state-building and statehood brought by the Dayton Peace Agreements (DPA) envisioned a particular role for civil society, which, following a Western model, meant to support accountability and statehood. Peacemaking efforts culminated in the General Framework for Peace, known as the DPA, agreed in November 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, USA. The Dayton Agreement established a new internal, political and territorial landscape for Bosnia and Herzegovina based exclusively on the register of ethnicity by actors during the war. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, transitional justice was based on establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), rebuilding justice institutions, and fostering a non-governmental organization (NGO) sector for 'bottom-up' reconciliation initiatives. The Bosnian model for peacebuilding was based on establishing NGOs that would help engage in projects of truth-telling, trauma healing, and other transitional justice strategies.
