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During June and July 1999 international military and civilian organisations entered a territory from which every form of administration and authority had become suddenly absent.

The 1999 action plan of the Reconstruction and Return Task Force (RRTF) represents the most determined effort yet to implement a policy of mass minority return in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

ICG, with the support of the European Commission, has established a project to promote justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  With the assistance of 8 partner organisations based all over BiH, ICG will monitor individual cases and general trends to highlight and promote the development of a judicial system in BiH up to the standards of a modern, European judiciary.

Repercussions from Kosovo continue to shake Republika Srpska (RS), and may prove a catalyst for further transformation and reform.

On 28 June 1989, Slobodan Milosevic stood on the site of the ancient Serb battleground of Kosovo Polje and delivered the speech that was to propel him to prominence and the leadership of Yugoslavia.

The ICG Balkans Report N°66, “Kosovo: Let’s Learn from Bosnia”, of 17 May 1999 looked at how experience in Bosnia could be useful in Kosovo, and also at the extent to which the Rambouillet agreement of 23 February 1999 resembled the Dayton agreement of 21 November 1995.

The magnitude and complexity of the unfolding refugee crisis in the Balkans is hard to overstate.  One and a half million people have been forced to flee their homes in Kosovo since the start of this year. 

What seems to be turning into a continental war first broke out on the territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo on 2 August 1998. So far, it has involved a dozen African countries, either directly as combatants in the fighting, or indirectly as mediators in various peace initiatives.

A continental war has begun in Africa.  It reaches almost without interruption from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.  Whereas some of the conflicts along this path started decades ago, a new phase involving more than a dozen states has now begun.

Since NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began on 24 March 1999, Macedonia has been in an extremely vulnerable frontline position, facing an unmanageable influx of refugees from Kosovo, the prospect of economic collapse and volatile domestic interethnic relations.