Building peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Challenges, limits and opportunities in post-war rehabilitation

This article deals with the way in which international society, through its institutions, has managed the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina from its pre-war phase to the current post-war phase. The article brings out two main ideas. The first is that internationalbehaviour in the pre-war and war phases was often based on erroneous or even false analyses of the situation leaving major obstacles for the construction of peace since the war. The second idea, related to the first, is that, while the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Accords is rapidly advancing, the fact that Bosnia is still a fragile state, burdened by a serious economic crisis and significant corruption and possessed of only weak public institutions and a weak civil society, makes it strongly dependent on international aid, a de-facto protectorate rather than a state based on the rule of law. It appears, then, that the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords will be a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for post-war rehabilitation and the construction of peace in Bosnia