General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina | |
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![]() Seated from left to right: Slobodan Milošević, Alija Izetbegović, Franjo Tuđman initialling the Dayton Peace Accords at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on 21 November 1995. | |
Drafted | 10 August 1995 |
Signed | 14 December 1995[1] |
Location | Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, U.S. |
Signatories | |
Parties | |
Language | English |
The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement or the Dayton Accords (Serbo-Croatian: Dejtonski mirovni sporazum, Дејтонски мировни споразум), and colloquially known as the Dayton (Croatian: Dayton, Bosnian: Dejton, Serbian: Дејтон) in ex-Yugoslav parlance, is the peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, United States, finalised on 21 November 1995,[3] and formally signed in Paris, on 14 December 1995. These accords put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, which was part of the much larger Yugoslav Wars.
The warring parties agreed to peace and to a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of two parts, the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The agreement has been criticized for creating ineffective and unwieldy political structures and entrenching the ethnic cleansing of the previous war.[4][5]
Consider, instead, one contemporary parallel, Bosnia: the degree to which the international community via the Owen-Vance plan, or even the later Dayton accord, actively promoted or endorsed the destruction of a multi-ethnic society; the degree to which it helped to facilitate the creation of a greater Serbia or an enlarged Croatia; the degree to which it was, at the very least, an accessory after the fact to both 'ethnic cleansing' and sub-genocide.