VERONA FORUM Statements on Human Rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina after Dayton

The Dayton agreement is actually a cease-fire and not a peace agreement. Since peace means political and social solution to the political and social conflicts which triggered the war, clearly the Dayton agreement does not meet these conditions for at least three reasons:

1.1. It starts with the ethno-national communities as the only legitimate political subject. And then the agreement “forgets” the fact that “only” 90% of the population of B-H were declared Moslems-Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, while some 10% refused to belong to these ethno-national groups. There is no political representation for almost half a million of the inhabitants of B-H according to the agreement. This is in direct violation of the introductory provisions of the B-H constitution (Annex 4) for equal rights of all the citizens of the state.

1.2. It does not protect the existence of B-H - at least in the long run - as an independent state (IFOR has to control the “Inter-Entity Boundary Line”), and after the end of IFOR mission the only question will be whether the partition of B-H is going to be realised with or without renewed war.

1.3. There are no provisions for the authority of the B-H Parliamentary Assembly that is to be composed of the Serbs from Republika Srpska and Croats and Moslems from the Federation, and not of the representatives.
At the same time the Assembly has no independent source of income (similar to the situation in the American Confederation 1767-1776). This can not really work.


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The actions of the NGOs and the first elements of the civil society within B-H should in such a situation include at least the following activities:

2.1. Existing local NGOs and all the representatives of the civil society should be massively supported. Reconstruction should be directly accessible to them. Honest partnerships will stimulate the struggle for reconciliation and recovery of the civil society which nobody else can do for them.

2.2. The control of the international forces - and the administration - in B-H could be done by the relevant international NGOs in co-operation with the local NGOs. They would be more objective and reliable controllers and critics of the activities of IFOR or the civil ascpects of the operation, or the EU administration in Mostar, etc. then the local political forces.

2.3. Using the example of the “down south” marches for human rights in the southern states of USA in the sixties, where many activists from other parts of the USA have helped to register black voters, the return of refugees should be accompanied by the international activists to protect them, at least in the first weeks after their return.

March, 1996