The Dayton Agreement

December, 14th 1995

The agreement's main purpose was to promote peace and stability in Bosnia & Herzegovina. It also established the current Constitution, which is basically the Annex 4 of the agreement.

The present political divisions of Bosnia & Herzegovina and its structure of government were agreed as part of the Constitution. Bosnia & Herzegovina is a complete state, but composed of two "entities" : the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. No entity or entities can ever be separated from Bosnia and Herzegovina unless through due legal process. Although highly decentralised, the countries has to retain a central government.

The conference took place from 1–21 November 1995. The main participants from the region were the President of the Republic of Serbia Slobodan Milošević , President of Croatia Franjo Tuđman, and President of Bosnia & Herzegovina Alija Izetbegović.

The full and formal agreement was signed in Paris on 14 December 1995 and witnessed by French president Jacques Chirac, U.S. president Bill Clinton, UK prime minister John Major, German chancellor Helmut Kohl and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

The agreement mandated a wide range of international organizations to monitor, oversee, and implement components of the agreement : NATO (Implementation Force) ; Office of the High Representative (civil implementation) ; OSCE (organising first free elections in 1996).

At the beginning, the Implementation Force (IFOR) led by NATO had a mission of peace enforcement process to implement the content of the Dayton’s Agreement. On 21 December 1996 the task of IFOR was taken over by SFOR. In turn, SFOR was replaced by the European EUFOR Althea force in 2004.

In 1997, some politicians tried to ask the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina to cancel some decisions of the Agreement for unconstitutionality, but the Court declared itself non-competent.

On 13 February 2008, the head of the Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina Željko Komšić declared that the original Dayton Agreement was lost from the Presidency's archive. High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina Miroslav Lajčak said: "I don't know whether the news is sad or funny." On 16 November 2009 the French Foreign Ministry delivered a certified copy to the Bosnian government.

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