Home Sweet Home? Restitution in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The loss of housing for large groups of people is often one of the destructive consequences of armed conflict. In the post-conflict phase, those who try to reclaim their homes face many legal challenges. An emerging human right to housing restitution can be an important tool in achieving successful housing restitution. The inclusion of such a right in the peace treaty concluded at the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina shows that legal recognition of people's housing claims is a core aspect of post-conflict reconstruction. If implemented in a way which complies with the rule of law, the recognition of a right to housing restitution can be an important contribution to structural peace in fragile States.

Trapped between Promise and Reality in Colombia's Victims' Law: Reflections on Reparations, Development and Social Justice

“…The focus on compensation payments and other quantifiable measures is not uncommon to reparations programmes in any case, since these give clearer evidence of straightforward success than longer‐term development measures (Buyse, ; Aroussi, ). This is perhaps unsurprising in the political context of TJ in Colombia, where President Santos connected his presidency to paying the country's debt to the victims through reparations – and later peace with the FARC.…”

“…In the last decades, and thanks to the progressive jurisprudence of the Inter‐American Court of Human Rights, reparations have expanded to encompass five different measures: restitution; compensation; rehabilitation; satisfaction; and guarantees of non‐repetition (Uprimny and Saffon, ; Moffett, ). They should combine material, financial and symbolic, as well as individual and collective measures, as identified by the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation (United Nations General Assembly, ), whose unanimous adoption is a clear indication of the wide acceptance of reparations as a standard response to human rights violations (Buyse, ; Moffett, ).…”