Dayton Agreement

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Signing of the Dayton Agreement (Paris, December 14, 1995)
Signatures of the signatories of the agreement ( Museum of Croatian History , Zagreb )

The Dayton Agreement (also known as the Dayton Treaty ) ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 after three and a half years .

The peace treaty was initialed on November 21, 1995 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton (Ohio) and on December 14, 1995 in Paris , through the mediation of the USA with the participation of the European Union and under the direction of then US President Bill Clinton signed. The signatories were the Serbian President Slobodan Milošević , the Croatian President Franjo Tuđman and the chairman of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Presidium Alija Izetbegović .

Participants in the peace talks

Clinton, Milošević, Holbrooke, Hill and Christopher during a conversation in Paris

Signatory

More people

History and negotiations

Richard Holbrooke

The initiative for the negotiations to settle the war in Bosnia came from the USA. Media reports of the cruel fighting in the Balkans had triggered considerable public pressure, which was reflected in massive diplomatic pressure by the Clinton administration on the conflicting parties to finally begin negotiations.

The negotiations began on November 1, 1995 and took place under strict conditions. The US side forced the three presidents into uninterrupted three-week negotiations, during which contact with the outside world was largely cut off. Above all, it was about the future demarcation of the border in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

On November 10, 1995, representatives of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian-Croatian Federation signed a Dayton Agreement on the implementation of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina with an agreement on the interim administration for the city of Mostar .

On November 12, 1995, the Croatians and Serbs of the Republic of Serbian Krajina signed an agreement in principle in Erdut on the regions of Eastern Slavonia , Baranja and Western Syrmia , which were initially to be placed under UN interim administration and then reintegrated into the Republic of Croatia.

Result of the agreement

Carl Bildt

On November 21, 1995 the initialing of the contract at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio (USA) was successfully completed. On November 22, 1995, two UN Security Council resolutions announced the arms embargo and the suspension of economic sanctions against Yugoslavia. However, implementation did not take place until June or October 1996. On December 8 and 9, 1995, following the negotiations on the Dayton Agreement in London (Great Britain), an implementation conference was held under the leadership of the High Representative for Reconstruction, Carl Bildt from Sweden. On December 14, 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement was formally signed in the Paris Invalides and came into force immediately. On December 15, 1995, the UN Security Council passed resolution 1031 , which formed the basis for the military implementation of all agreements made in the agreement by the Peace Implementation Forces (IFOR).

Main contents of the agreement

Map of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton Treaty
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina, which declared itself independent from Yugoslavia in 1992, remains as a sovereign and undivided but strongly decentralized state within the internationally recognized borders.
  • Sarajevo remains the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina is recognized by Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia .
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina is made up of two entities: the Republika Srpska with 49% and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with 51% of the territory.
  • The affiliation of the Brčko district (about 1% of the territory) to one of the two republics should only be decided later. (In the meantime, this decision has been made to the effect that Brčko is a condominium between the two republics, but the district is actually subject to the federal government with local self-government.)

The agreement demands complete freedom of movement for residents and grants refugees and displaced persons the right to return to their original homes. The new constitution provides for democracy and a market economy and sets up five national institutions: the bicameral parliament , the presidium , the council of ministers, the constitutional court and the central bank . The state level receives only a few competencies: foreign and foreign trade policy , customs and monetary policy , immigration issues and less important areas such as the control of air traffic . The power of the republics includes all areas that the constitution does not assign to the federal institutions. In Dayton, responsibility for defense policy , which was still left to the individual states, has been gradually transferred to the state as a whole since 2005.

In the military part of the peace agreement (Annex 1 A), the conflicting parties agreed not to threaten or use violence against one another. Today a European peacekeeping force ( EUFOR ) monitors and ensures this . It took over this task from the protection force subordinate to NATO (only from December 1995 IFOR within the framework of Operation Joint Endeavor and as a replacement for UNPROFOR , later SFOR ). In addition, according to Annex 11, the establishment of an international police force (IPTF) with a nominal strength of 1,700 men was agreed.

criticism

Critics state that the agreement ended the Bosnian war, but did not create a viable new order. Numerous independent observers recognize that Bosnia-Herzegovina is still a divided country. For example, the long-standing President of the Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik , who has been the Serbian representative in the State Presidency since 2018, repeatedly questions Bosnia-Herzegovina's right to exist as a state and describes the country as a non-sustainable construct, as well as a "devil state". Its policy is openly aimed at declaring the Republika Srpska independent. Critics also repeatedly point out that the Dayton Treaty does not sufficiently condemn ethnic cleansing and consolidate the de facto status that was forcibly created during the war. Thus, for example, the town of Srebrenica as a result of its conquest by the Army of Republika Srpska , to which the Srebrenica massacre followed until today in the Republika Srpska, although the majority population was Bosniak there before the war. The same goes for places like Višegrad or Foča .

See also

literature

  • Richard Holbrooke : My Mission. From war to peace in Bosnia , Piper Verlag Munich 1998

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Switzerland trains mediators for delicate missions. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. April 30, 2018, accessed May 12, 2018 .
  2. ↑ The population of Bosnia-Herzegovina is divided over constitutional changes in: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of July 19, 2007 (last accessed on January 27, 2014)
  3. ↑ Serb leader Dodik: Bosnia is a devil state in: derstandard.at of May 26, 2013 (last accessed on January 27, 2014)
  4. ↑ 10 Years After Dayton, to Unfair Peace , on dw.de of Deutsche Welle , November 21, 2005 (last accessed on January 27, 2014)
  5. ↑ Thomas Schmid: Lebende Tote , in: Berliner Zeitung of November 18, 2009 (last accessed on January 27, 2014)