Photo taken by Rimantė Jaugaitė. Appeal to Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina), 2023.

The Bosnian War formally ended 30 years ago with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) in 1995. However, the peace that followed fell short of many people’s expectations. Rather than fostering national unity, the DPA established a complex political and administrative system of power-sharing among the country’s three main constituent peoples: Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs—effectively leaving all other citizens marginalized. This system institutionalized ethnic divisions, requiring citizens to identify with one of the three groups and making it difficult to adopt a more inclusive, civic Bosnian identity. Beyond politics, segregation persists in areas such as education, media, social and cultural life, and informal economic networks. These enduring divisions, compounded by the increasingly provocative and genocide-denying rhetoric of Republika Srpska’s leading politician and long-serving president, Milorad Dodik (in office from 2010 to 2018 and again from 2022 to 2025), make peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina more fragile than ever.

In this context, the graffiti “Mir мир mir.”—the word ‘peace’ written in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts—symbolically addresses all major communities in BiH. While Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs speak mutually intelligible varieties of a common language, script and symbolic expression still carry deep political and cultural meaning. In light of the ongoing global conflicts and escalations, peace may seem meaningless and banal. Yet for many people in BiH, it remains an unfulfilled promise. They are weary of the lingering effects of the DPA and long for a normal life and a moment of respite. Ironically, a sticker placed next to the graffiti invites passersby to participate in a “healing week” and promises “divine straightening,” creating an unexpected dialogue.