Washington Agreement in the context of Mate Granić

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement or the Dayton Accords (Serbo-Croatian: Dejtonski mirovni sporazum / Дејтонски мировни споразум), and colloquially known as the Dayton (Bosnian: Dejton; Serbian: Дејтон / Dejton), is the peace agreement ending the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, an armed conflict part of the larger Yugoslav Wars. It was signed on 21 November 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, United States, at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was re-signed ceremonially in Paris, France on 14 December 1995.

The warring parties agreed to peace and to a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of two parts: the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina entered into the related arms control treaty, the Florence Agreement, in 1996 under the Accords. The Dayton followed the Washington Agreement, signed the year prior, in collective efforts to delineate the country's geography.

The ten cantons of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the two political entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, are its federated states with a high level of autonomy. The cantons were established by the Law on Federal Units (Cantons) on 12 June 1996 as a result of the Washington Agreement of 1994 between the representatives of the Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks.

Five of the cantons have a Bosniak majority: Una-Sana Canton, Tuzla Canton, Zenica-Doboj Canton, Bosnian-Podrinje Canton Goražde and Sarajevo Canton; three have a Croat majority: Posavina Canton, West Herzegovina Canton and Canton 10, and two cantons are regarded as ethnically mixed: Central Bosnia Canton and Herzegovina-Neretva Canton. The most populous canton is Tuzla Canton, while Canton 10 is the largest by geographical area.

The Croat–Bosniak War or Croat–Muslim War was a conflict between the Bosniak-dominated Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, supported by Croatia, that lasted from 18 October 1992 to 23 February 1994.It is often referred to as a "war within a war" because it was part of the larger Bosnian War. In the beginning, the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) fought together in an alliance against the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). By the end of 1992, however, tensions between the ARBiH and the HVO increased. The first armed incidents between them occurred in October 1992 in central Bosnia. The military alliance continued until early 1993, when it mostly fell apart and the two former allies engaged in open conflict.

The Croat–Bosniak War escalated in central Bosnia and soon spread to Herzegovina, with most of the fighting taking place in those two regions. The war generally consisted of sporadic conflicts with numerous short ceasefires. However, it was not an all-out war between Bosniaks and Croats and they remained allied in other regions – mainly Bihać, Sarajevo and Tešanj. Several peace plans were proposed by the international community during the war, but each of them failed. On 23 February 1994, a lasting ceasefire was agreed, and an agreement ending the hostilities was signed in Washington on 18 March 1994, by which time the HVO had suffered significant territorial losses. The agreement led to the establishment of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the resumption of joint operations against Serb forces, which helped alter the military balance and bring the Bosnian War to an end.