ABSTRACT
The 1991 Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) census counted a total population of 4.3 million people. This chapter examines the policy of international community representatives in BiH through highlighting the distinction between the initial post-war period, where there was little coercive international intervention, and the postBonn era of direct intervention. In the former period, people returned to areas where they were members of the majority ethnicity, and where returns took place, refugee return consolidated the ethnically homogenizing trends of the war. In the following period, the international community focused on prioritizing minority returns with the intention of fulfilling the Dayton aspiration of a return to the status quoante of 1991. The international community’s policy intervention with regard to the treatment of the refugee and IDP question developed in response to the experience of return movements and the changing international context.
