Housing, Land and Property Rights: the impact of the UN Peacekeeping Operation on economic recovery in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This research investigates the relationship between the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO) policies on housing, land and property rights (HLP) issues and the economic recovery in post-conflict countries by looking at the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The HLP issues and related economic trends have received little attention in the current literature. The thesis presents a theoretical argument where addressing the HLP issues promotes economic recovery, through the conditions set by the presence of the mission in a given country. The presence of the UN troops should have a positive effect on the number of the claims and the property repossessions, the return of the refugees and, as a consequence, improvement in economic conditions. In order to test this proposition, I collect a new dataset based on archive information regarding the involvement of the UN with HLP issues in BiH. The data contains information on the number of claims and repossessions of properties in BiH based on the activities of the Commission for Real Property Claims of Displaced Persons and Refugees (CRPC) and the coding of the activities of the UNPKO mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) during the duration of the mandate from 1996 until 2003. The newly built dataset presents information on 142 municipalities in BiH. The results of the statistical analysis show that, by providing security, the presence of the mission leads people to reclaim their properties. However, when it comes to the relationship with economic recovery, the simple presence of the mission is not significant.