Dayton Agreement
| General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina | |
|---|---|
Seated from left to right: Slobodan Milošević, Alija Izetbegović, Franjo Tuđman initialling the Dayton Peace Accords at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on 21 November 1995. | |
| Drafted | 10 August 1995 |
| Signed | 21 November 1995 (initialed on) |
| Location | Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, US |
| Signatories | |
| Parties | |
| Language | Bosnian, Croatian, English and Serbian |
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 (Croatian: Dayton, Bosnian: Dejton, Serbian: Дејтон) in ex-Yugoslav parlance, is the peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, United States, initialed (signed legally) on 21 November 1995, and signed ceremonially in Paris, on 14 December 1995. These accords put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, which was part of the much larger Yugoslav Wars.
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. The Accords was later amended in 1996 to include an arms control agreement between the later renamed signatories: Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Accords has been criticized for creating ineffective and unwieldy political structures as well as entrenching the ethnic cleansing of the previous war.