The Significance of Property Restitution to Sustainable Return in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT The restitution of property to refugees and displaced persons (RDPs) who fled their homes during the 1992 to 1995 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been highly successful on its own terms. After getting off to a slow start in the immediate post‐war years, this process saw the return of more than 200,000 claimed properties to their pre‐war residents by mid‐2004. Although property restitution has facilitated durable solutions for RDPs who have benefited from it, these durable solutions have not exclusively taken the form of voluntary and permanent return. In many cases, RDPs have chosen instead to sell, exchange, or lease their restituted homes in order to finance voluntary internal resettlement in parts of the country other than their pre‐war places of residence. In all cases, however, property restitution has been crucial to the viability and sustainability of either return or resettlement, facilitating free and informed choices by RDPs regarding their future. Property restitution in Bosnia and Herzegovina has often been held up as a model for other post‐conflict settings characterized by mass‐displacement. However, the utility of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an example must be assessed in light of favourable domestic and international factors that are unlikely to be repeated in other contexts. This paper argues that these factors should not disqualify Bosnia and Herzegovina as an example, but should instead underscore the importance that lessons learned in Bosnia and Herzegovina be incorporated early in the planning of other peace missions and implemented consistently. One of the foremost of these lessons was the efficacy of shifting the focus from the highly politicized concept of return to a more impartial “rule of law” approach, connoting an emphasis on individuals' rights to their former homes. The unusual level of resources that allowed the international community to correct its own early mistakes would not have been enough to guarantee property restitution in the absence of this successful implementation strategy.