The legacy of peace
Publisher: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung
Volume: 262 pages, pdf
Description:
This publication is the result of intensive joint efforts by the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) Office in Sarajevo and a group of local intellectuals from Bosnia and Herzegovina, including authors, publicists and professors. Although published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, known as the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), the aim of the publication is not to celebrate this jubilee and write for this occasion but to use two decades of practical experience with the DPA in order to draw some relevant conclusions. This publication should be observed as a kind of introspection of local intelligence, which may not be greater that the international one, but which is most certainly adapted to the necessity of life in BiH as it is. The authors and the FES achieved agreement on such an approach immediately without any further ado due to the fact that, inter alia, there is not much that has not been said or written about this Agreement and any reiteration would actually be like writing in the sand. Therefore, we decided to focus on the issues that seemed insufficiently analysed, such as how to create a more functional state within the Dayton limitations without necessarily introducing Dayton II or substantial amendments to the Annex IV to the Agreement. Our intention is, therefore, to examine 12 Bosnia and Herzegovina 20 years after the Dayton Peace Accords | Amer Kapetanović if the non-functionality of the political systems in BiH within the Dayton framework is preconditioned by the constitutional norm, its absence or whether it is a result of many-years-long abuse, contortion of or even distancing from the Dayton Agreement as such. How much has this situation been instigated by clientelist political (un) culture, ignorant of the common good and which does not know how (or does not want) to fight for it but which puts forward some better particularisms, “purer” ideas and derived political systems? The events unfolding at the time when our authors were already working on their essays cleared up any doubts as to whether our course of enquiry was correct. A new referendum adventure in RS and a rather unspecific, divided and mild reaction by the international community even twenty years into the implementation of the Agreement made us doubt if we correctly read the user manual for the Dayton Peace Agreement and instructions on precautionary measures. Or the problem may be that there was no manual and that the international administrators wrote such a manual in fragments, as suited to the political moment or reality.