On December 14, 1995, the Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris. The document officially ended the nearly four-year civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The agreement was the result of the Dayton Conference, which began on November 1. The main participants in this conference were the president of the remaining Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević, the president of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman, the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegović, the chief American negotiator, Richard Holbrooke, and General Wesley Clark.
Three weeks after the start of the negotiations, Milošević, Tuđman, and Izetbegović reached an agreement and adopted a General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina on November 21. The formal agreement was signed by the three presidents on 14 December 1995 at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
According to the agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina became a sovereign state comprising two largely autonomous regions - a federation of Muslims and Croats called the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a slightly smaller mini-state of Bosnian Serbs called the Republika Srpska. It also defined the country's international and inter-provincial borders.
The day after the formal signing of the peace agreement, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1031, which mandated NATO to implement the military aspects of the agreement. On 20 December 1995, a 60,000-strong NATO-led multinational force, called the Implementation Force (IFOR), was deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.