The Impact of the Dayton Peace Treaty on Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina

In post-conflict societies, peace agreements play a crucial role in establishing governance frameworks that balance stability with inclusivity yet often embed structural barriers that perpetuate divisions.This thesis examines Bosnia and Herzegovina as a critical case study of these challenges, focusing on how the Dayton Peace Agreement's institutional design has shaped human rights and political participation in an ethnically divided society.While the Dayton framework succeeded in ending the Bosnian War, it entrenched an ethnically segmented governance system, privileging to some degree the three constituent peoples (Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs) while marginalizing "Others" and at the same time reinforcing territorial discrimination.Using qualitative content analysis of legal texts, human rights reports, and landmark cases like Sejdi and Finci v. BiH, this study reveals how Dayton's rigid ethnic quotas and decentralized structures contradict international human rights norms, particularly the right to equal political participation.A comparative analysis with a flexible consociational model underscores the limitations of Bosnia and Herzegovina's static system and identifies pathways for reform.By integrating Consociational Theory, Will Kymlicka's multiculturalism framework, and the Human Rights-Based Approach, this research fills a gap in the literature by systematically analyzing how Dayton's trade-offs between stability and inclusivity have hindered long-term democratic development.The findings contribute to broader debates on post-conflict governance, demonstrating that while ethnic power-sharing may avert violence, its inflexibility risks entrenching exclusion.This study advocates for constitutional reforms that reconcile group rights with individual equality, offering lessons for divided societies navigating the tensions between peacebuilding and democratic inclusivity.