In October 2012, the European Commission recommended that Albania be granted European Union (EU) candidate status, subject to the completion of key measures in certain areas, including in asylum. One of the government’s objectives was to align Albania’s Refugee Status…
I first met Melchora, a Guatemalan Mayan Indian refugee in Quintana Roo on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, more than 20 years ago. I was visiting the hospital in Chetumal where her son was being treated following an accident two months previously.…
The Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on 14 December 1995, and its Annex 7 on ‘Agreement on Refugees and Displaced Persons’ established that: “All refugees and displaced persons have the right freely to return…
The devastation orchestrated by political, military and paramilitary leaders a generation ago continues to exert a malicious influence on the Western Balkans region long after many of those responsible have been convicted for their crimes. Just as the legacy of…
The clash of separatist and ethnic interests in the Balkans led to a war that began in early 1992 and in which the use of violence against civilians shocked the world. It was during this conflict that the term ‘ethnic…
The 1990s wars in the Balkans triggered large-scale displacement within the region. Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia hosted about 40% of the refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), while Austria, Germany, Canada, the United States and Australia also received large numbers.…
In 2011, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia signed the Joint Declaration on Ending Displacement and Ensuring Durable Solutions for Vulnerable Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons.[1] A year later a donor fund was established to implement a multi-year…
The Bosnian war ended in 1995 but many of those displaced during the war still live in a situation of protracted displacement, neither adequately protected by the state nor fully able to access the basic rights of their citizenship. As…
Annex 7 of the Dayton Peace Agreement represented a breakthrough in the history of conflict settlement. It stated for the first time that displaced persons should be able not just to repatriate to their country of origin but to return…
