The legacy of ethnic cleansing: The international community and the returns process in post-Dayton Bosnia–Herzegovina

This paper examines the international communityʹs post-war effort to promote the return of persons displaced by ethnic cleansing in Bosnia–Herzegovina. The war itself began as an extreme ethnonationalist project, seeking security through territorial separation. This created a massive displacement with more than half the countryʹs population driven from their homes largely as a result of the terrorism of ethnic cleansing. The peace settlement at Dayton guaranteed the right to return for displaced persons but also effectively divided the country into ethnonationalist homelands. Thus, while the initial security dilemma for the international community was to separate the warring factions and keep the peace, they soon faced an added security dilemma created by the displaced exercising their right to return to homes in what had become hostile ethnonationalist territories. Faced with obstructions to returns put in place by local ethnonationalists who continued to run day-to-day government operations in places of return, the implementation of the right to return forced the international community to overcome its apolitical and accommodating stance. Changes in the international governance of Bosnia enabled a series of policies designed to promote returns—recognized as key to reconstruction—that employed localized spatial strategies of intervention in support of returnees. After a decade of displacement, the legacy of ethnic cleansing endures, forming limits to returns and persistent insecurity for returning communities, thus permanently altering Bosniaʹs human geography and political future.