41. Returnees, Remittances, and Reconstruction: International Politics and Local Consequences in Bosnia
- Author:
- Barbara Franz
- Publication Date:
- 10-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations
- Institution:
- School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University
- Abstract:
- Refugee emigration from, and return to, Bosnia and Herzegovina is closely tied to the 1992-1995 war, and the wide-reaching consequences thereof in the post-conflict recovery period. During the conflict, over half of the country's population of 4.4 million people were forced to leave their homes through systematic methods of violence and war, which resulted in the death of about 250,000 people. It was during this conflict that the term ethnic cleansing was first commonly used.1 By the end of the war, million people had been internally displaced, and another 1.3 million people had fled abroad. Residences, industry and infrastructure had been destroyed on a massive scale, and million mines were spread throughout the country. In 1995, the Dayton Peace Accords ended the war, but formalized the de facto ethnic division of the previously multi-ethnic republic. Bosnia and Herzegovina was separated into two entities divided along ethnic lines. One body, the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, consists of the areas controlled by the Bosnian Muslims and Croats, and the other entity, Republica Srpska, corresponds with the ethnonationalist fatherland claimed by the Bosnian Serb leadership before the war. Although it brought an end to the hostilities, Dayton failed to effectively address the political conflict over the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina that had initially instigated the war.
- Political Geography:
- Bosnia