Wartime division in peacetime schools

In: Forced migration review, Heft 50

Abstract

The education system in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a logical consequence of both the lack of meaningful and systemic political reconciliation over the past two decades, and the practical public policy implications of the power-sharing state structure agreed at Dayton. The country's education infrastructure was not immune from the new devolved, fragmented and, some would say, convoluted structure. Schools continued providing instruction with the same ethnically exclusive character as during the war. There was a period of time, particularly between 1999 and 2007, when educational reforms began to take shape. The needs of returnee children were explicitly recognised in the Interim Agreement on Accommodation of the Rights and Needs of Returnee Children, signed in 2002, which aimed to end the most blatant practices that prevented sustainable return. Far from being a soft policy matter, education in a post-war state is a security issue that it is perilous to ignore. Adapted from the source document.