The Commission for Real Property Claims of Displaced Persons and Refugees (CRPC) was established in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Annex 7 of the Dayton Peace Agreement. While not the first structure created to deal with claims for property lost in war, CRPC may be the first attempt to immediately address a situation of such massive displacement, in the place where it occurred, and to provide some form of speedy relief. This article asks the question of whether it has succeded in its task; and what lessons it offers as a potential model for dealing with other situations of large-scale displacement and loss of real property. Critical assessment from some sources has already concluded that the CRPC has fallen short of producing the results to which the Dayton Peace Agreement aspired. It is also clear, however, that those ambitious aims, namely to restore actual possession of real property, to pay compensation and completely to rebuild a shattered property legal framework, have never been comprehensively achieved in any other comparable post-conflict situation, let alone in the timeframes which were initially envisaged for the Dayton framework. In this context, it can be argued that the achievements which have been made in Bosnia and Herzegovina represent progressive steps towards the evolution of effective mechanisms and principles for assisting displaced people to utilize real property rights.

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Bosnia and Herzegovina refugee property rights social policy human rights