After a civil war, many refugees and internally displaced people return to their homes, but most of their houses are destroyed, illegally occupied or without evidence of property rights. This paper attempts to explain the importance of addressing housing, land and property rights (HLP) in the aftermath of conflict. It argues that dealing with HLP issues promotes economic recovery though the reconstruction of human capital and the reduction of horizontal inequalities. The United Nations’ Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO) mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina represents a case where UNPKO successfully implemented an innovative process to address HLP issues. I build and analyse a data set, including official records, UNPKO reports, and interviews. This paper uses a disaggregated approach, comparing the implementation of the policies between the 146 municipalities and addressing the impact of the actions of the peacekeeping mission. The paper examines local variation in economic performance across the Bosnian municipalities and comparing the municipalities’ recovery using difference in difference estimations. The findings suggest that where HLP processes were implemented the economic performance of municipalities was better than in the ones that there was not implementation.
