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 (Serbo-Croatian: Dejton / Дејтон), is the peace agreement ending the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, an armed conflict part of the larger Yugoslav Wars. It was signed on 21 November 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, United States, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was re-signed ceremonially in Paris, France, on 14 December 1995.
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. Bosnia and Herzegovina entered into the related arms control treaty, the Florence Agreement, in 1996 under the Accords. The Dayton followed the Washington Agreement, signed the year prior, in collective efforts to delineate the country's geography.
Praised for establishing lasting peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Dayton Accords have also been criticized for creating an unduly complex political governance system in the country, as well as entrenching regional ethnic cleansing.
Though basic elements of the Dayton Agreement were proposed in international talks as early as 1992, these negotiations were initiated following the unsuccessful previous peace efforts and arrangements, the August 1995 Croatian military Operation Storm and its aftermath, the government military offensive against the Republika Srpska, conducted in parallel with NATO's Operation Deliberate Force. During September and October 1995, world powers (especially the United States and Russia), gathered in the Contact Group, pressured the leaders of the three sides to attend settlement negotiations; Dayton, Ohio was eventually chosen as the venue.
Talks began with an outline of key points presented by the US in a team led by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake in visits to London, Bonn, Paris and other European stops 10 – 14 August 1995. These included Sochi, to consult Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. Lake's team handed off to a separate US inter-agency group led by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, who went on to negotiate with Balkan leaders in their capitals. The Holbrooke crew conducted five rounds of intense shuttle diplomacy from August to October, including short conferences in Geneva and New York that resulted in the parties' adoption of principles for a settlement on 8 and 26 September respectively.
The Dayton conference took place from 1–21 November 1995. The main participants from the region were the president of the Republic of Serbia Slobodan Milošević (whom the Bosnian Serbs had previously empowered to represent their interests), President of Croatia Franjo Tuđman, and President of Bosnia and Herzegovina Alija Izetbegović with his Foreign Minister Muhamed Šaćirbeg.
The peace conference was led by US secretary of state Warren Christopher, and negotiator Richard Holbrooke with two co-chairmen in the form of EU Special Representative Carl Bildt and the First Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Igor Ivanov. A key participant in the US delegation was General Wesley Clark. The head of the UK's team was Pauline Neville-Jones, political director of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The UK military representative was Col Arundell David Leakey. Paul Williams, through the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), served as legal counsel to the Bosnian Government delegation during the negotiations.
Holbrooke spoke of the "immense difficulty of engaging the Bosnian government in a serious negotiation".
The secure site was chosen in order to remove all the parties from their comfort zone, without which they would have little incentive to negotiate; to reduce their ability to negotiate through the media; and to securely house over 800 staff and attendants. Curbing the participants' ability to negotiate via the media was a particularly important consideration. Holbrooke wanted to prevent posturing through early leaks to the press.
After having been initialed (signed legally) in Dayton, Ohio, on 21 November 1995, the agreement was signed ceremonially in Paris on 14 December 1995 and witnessed by President of the European Council Felipe González (the prime minister of Spain), French president Jacques Chirac, US president Bill Clinton, UK prime minister John Major, German chancellor Helmut Kohl and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
The agreement's main purpose is to promote peace and stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to endorse regional balance in and around the former Yugoslavia (Article V, annex 1-B).
The present political divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its structure of government were agreed upon (Annex 4). A key component of this was the delineation of the Inter-Entity Boundary Line to which many of the tasks listed in the Annexes referred.
The State of Bosnia Herzegovina is composed of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and of the Republika Srpska. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a complete state, as opposed to a confederation; no entity or entities could ever be separated from Bosnia and Herzegovina unless by due legal process. Although highly decentralised in its entities, it would still retain a central government, with a rotating state presidency, a central bank and a constitutional court.
The agreement mandated a wide range of international organizations to monitor, oversee and implement components of the agreement. The NATO-led IFOR (Implementation Force) was responsible for implementing military aspects of the agreement and deployed on 20 December 1995, taking over the forces of the UNPROFOR. The Office of the High Representative was charged with the task of civil implementation. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe was charged with organising the first free elections in 1996.
On 13 October 1997, the Croatian 1861 Law Party and the Bosnia-Herzegovina 1861 Law Party requested the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina to annul several decisions and to confirm one decision of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and, more importantly, to review the constitutionality of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina since it was alleged that the agreement violated the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina in a way that it undermined the integrity of the state and could cause the dissolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Court reached the conclusion that it is not competent to decide the dispute in regards to the mentioned decisions since the applicants were not subjects that were identified in Article VI.3 (a) of the Constitution on those who can refer disputes to the Court. The Court also rejected the other request:
the Constitutional Court is not competent to evaluate the constitutionality of the General Framework Agreement as the Constitutional Court has in fact been established under the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to uphold this Constitution ... The Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina was adopted as Annex IV to the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and consequently there cannot be a conflict or a possibility for controversy between this Agreement and the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It was one of the early cases in which the Court had to deal with the question of the legal nature of the Constitution. By making the remark in the manner of obiter dictum concerning the Annex IV (the Constitution) and the rest of the peace agreement, the Court actually "established the ground for legal unity" of the entire peace agreement, which further implied that all of the annexes are in the hierarchical equality. In later decisions the Court confirmed that by using other annexes of the peace agreement as a direct base for the analysis, not only in the context of systematic interpretation of the Annex IV. However, since the Court rejected the presented request of the appellants, it did not go into details concerning the controversial questions of the legality of the process in which the new Constitution (Annex IV) came to power and replaced the former Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Court used the same reasoning to dismiss the similar claim in a later case.