Dayton Agreement - Analysis and Criticism

Analysis and Criticism

The immediate purpose of the agreement was to freeze the military confrontation, and prevent them at all costs from resuming. It was thefore defined as a "construction of necessity".

Despite this, the Dayton Agreement proved to be a highly flexible instrument, allowing Bosnia and Herzegovina to move from an early post-conflict phase through reconstruction and consolidation, passing from a consociationalist approach to a more integrationist one. Many scholars refers to it as "the most impressive example of conflict resolution". Wolfgang Petritsch, OHR, has argued that the Dayton framework has allowed the international community to move "from statebuilding via institutions and capacity-building to identity building", putting Bosnia "on the road to Brussels"

Nevertheless, Dayton's main shortcomings may be described as:

1. enabling international actors (such as the OHR), unaccountable to BiH's citizens, to shape the agenda of post-war transition, up to enacting punishment over local political actors
2. leaving each ethnic group discontent with the results: the Bosnian Serbs for the somehow limited results (although strongly favored in statistical terms), such as the arbitration over the Brcko district; the Bosniaks for ignoring the human rights issues such as the Srebrenica massacre and recognizing Serbian entities such as the Republika Srpska; the Bosnian Croats for the lack of equality, lacking a Croat Entity.
3. according to University of Leipzig professor and Bosnian Academy of Sciences and Arts member Edin Šarčević, the current legal structure of the agreement does not abide by the basic principles of international law and the secular concept of national citizenship, making the Bosnian territorial and political situation continually unstable and fractious since its implementation in 1995.