The Lesson

"I think the decision to supplement the peace treaty with annexes designed to rebuild post-war BiH was and remains a far-sighted negotiating and peace-building tool that should be considered in any peace process with appropriate modifications to circumstances."

"The lesson is that theoretical models of consociational democracy, no matter how much they are based, in addition to everything else, on the assumed and expected consensus of key actors, are actually often implemented in such a way that the only form of consensus is the negative one, banally illustrated in the phrase "we agreed to agree". If the imperative of consensus is imposed from outside, and is not authentically derived, realized and supported by domestic decision makers, then you get a situation of 'not the worst, but continuously bad'."

"Peace is not the end of war, but the beginning of the fight for dignity. There is no lasting peace without truth, without justice and without people who will dare to call a crime a crime, no matter which national group they come from. Dayton teaches us that peace agreements can stop tanks, but not hatred - if there is no disarmament in the heads."

"Stop excluding the citizens from peace processes, and take demands for justice seriously."

"The key lesson of the Dayton process is that ending violence is not the same as bringing former warring parties together in one state. Durable peace requires institutions that foster inclusion, justice, and local ownership, not merely the cessation of hostilities through complex and externally imposed governance. Dayton succeeded because it reflected wartime realities and international power balance, but its implementors failed to adapt it to a peacetime democratic framework with a clear exit strategy. Future peace negotiations must therefore include sunset clauses for international mandates, prioritize balanced power-sharing that evolves with local political maturity, and integrate mechanisms for social and economic justice alongside legal accountability. Over-engineered institutional complexity and overreliance on international supervision can ossify divisions rather than overcome them."

"The need to be able revisit the nature of internationally brokered power-sharing agreements, which inevitably reflect the interests of the belligerents at the long-term expense of the citizenry as a whole. This would not necessarily make them easy to change - establishing a genuine modus vivendi at the popular level in all self-defined groups (of which there are more than 3 in BiH's case) as well as an overall majority of citizens is a sine qua non of a social contract with hope of success. Peace cartels are highly resilient and resistant to endogenous efforts at change. So there needs to be a real alliance between bottom-up efforts at change and the external guarantors to maximize chance of success. This would give citizens true agency in defining their societies on their own terms - and enable external guarantors to end their current roles."

"The key lesson that the Dayton Peace Agreement sends to the world is that peace comes first, and that disagreements, state and political problems should be resolved through political means and through dialogue."

"The key lesson of the Dayton process for some new peace processes in the world is that peace is not just the signing of an agreement, but a long-term process that requires the constant responsibility of both internal and international actors, until its limitations are overcome. The Dayton experience shows that sometimes a painful compromise is necessary to stop war. But we have clearly seen in these three decades that the agreement can freeze injustices and tensions if we do not work to improve it. In the long term, such an agreement without improvement, upgrading or full reform leads to sacrificing social cohesion for the sake of stability. For modern peace negotiations, this means that one must not only plan how to end the conflict, but also how to eliminate the goals of war and prevent them from being maintained and implemented by other means after the war, and how to build a sustainable order. Effective peace requires flexible frameworks that can be adapted to new circumstances and not treated as set in stone."

"Important lessons from the Dayton process are the importance of a careful and detailed analysis of the situation and the gradual implementation of the peace agreement, as well as the importance of early establishment of local ownership of the process of reconciliation and peace building. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Dayton Agreement established the Office of the High Representative (OHR), which in the early stages of the implementation of the agreement proved to be crucial for overcoming post-war tensions and political blockades. However, over time, the OHR went from being a problem-solving tool to becoming a problem in itself, as it went from being an independent arbiter to being one of the local players. Unfortunately, I think that this question, in today's global context, has perhaps only historical and theoretical significance. The latest practices in peace negotiations go in the opposite direction, ignoring law, justice, human rights and focusing on quick but also short-term solutions that primarily protect the interests of the negotiators and not the warring forces. Today, much more than ever before, a world order is being established where it is absolutely clear that 'the stronger one is the oppressor'."

"To never, ever leave it to local politicians to complete it! Namely, the Dayton Peace Agreement was supposed to have its next stages, as was said at the time. It was left to the same people to whom the war was a brother or to those who saw in it a chance for a career in politics to abuse it."

"As long as there’s no shooting, we’ll take anything."

"Don't just focus on ending the conflict but try to do one's best to create structures/systems that give peace a real chance."

"A key lesson from the Dayton process is that negotiated peace must be more than just an end to hostilities, it must contain a vision of a just and functional social order. Dayton showed that institutionalizing ethnic divisions too quickly can freeze conflict instead of solving it. Contemporary peace processes therefore need to harmonize realpolitik with long-term principles of inclusivity, civil equality and social reintegration, because without transforming the structures that produced the conflict, peace remains a fragile and temporary construct."

"While peace negotiations are always focused on the aim of ending violence, it’s clear that signing the deal is the beginning of a process and not the end. It is the implementation that matters. Identifying ways to marginalize spoilers, including through election systems constructed to decrease the space for a politics of division, is key if the aim is to empower citizens. I worry that the belief in the liberal/democratic peace and comprehensive security that was ascendant in the 90s is being rapidly replaced by a values-free, transactional geopolitical framework that will work for autocrats and billionaires while making life worse for regular people everywhere. I'm hopeful that people in BiH and the region, having lived through over a generation of political and media manipulation, could have stronger antibodies to fight these trends if the remnants of the transatlantic world would recognize who they should have as their true partners."