Student Workshop II: Renegotiating the Bosnian Constitution Five Years After Dayton

Simulation focus: The power-sharing arrangement drawn up at an internationally brokered peace agreement called the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1996. The Agreement was put into place to end a bloody ethnic war involving Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats, which had killed about 250,000 people since 1992. It led to a power sharing arrangement that effectively partitioned Bosnia, setting up two Entities: a Muslim/Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Bosnian Serb Republic, Republika Srpska, each with its own president, government, parliament, police and other bodies. Providing an overarching framework for both is a weak central Bosnian government and a three-member rotating presidency.

Dayton brought peace but it was, and remains, a controversial agreement, its critics arguing that it created de facto states along lines that reinforced separatism and nationalism at the expense of integration. Its defenders say it was the best chance of ending ethnic war; that it needed to be ambiguous about reintegration in order to bring parties diametrically opposed to each other on board, and that it does include significant provisions for reintegration. For instance, it enshrines the right of those displaced by the conflict to return home.

During the simulation exercise, participants were organized into groups and asked to explore two broad issues relating to the Dayton Agreement: