By Alix Kroeger in Sarajevo

The number of people in Bosnia who have been able to go back to their pre-war homes has nearly doubled in the past year.

People are getting back the keys to the flats and houses where they lived before the war and where they are often now in an ethnic minority.

Despite the rise, some people find it impossible to return as they have no property to go back to.

More than two million people - over half the population - were displaced during the Bosnian war from 1992 to 1995.

Enduring divisions

Implementation of the property laws is a central part of the international plan to encourage refugees to go home.

Over half the population was displaced

Out of more than a 250,000 claims filed since the end of the war, more than 100,000 have now resulted in repossession.

For the first four years after the war the process was bogged down by petty obstruction, consolidating the ethnic divisions of the war.

Properties had often been occupied by displaced persons from other parts of the country, many of whose own homes have been destroyed.

Hopes for new life

In 1999 the international community imposed changes to the property laws, obliging local officials to carry out evictions and provide alternative accommodation.

Implementation is patchy. In the Muslim-Croat Federation, nearly half of all claims have led to repossessions while in the Bosnian Serb Republic the figure is less than a third.

The chief international mediator in Bosnia, Wolfgang Petritsch, said with full implementation Bosnia would cease to be a society disfigured by ethnic apartheid.

But many refugees want to reclaim their property just so they can sell up and get out for good with a bit of money to start a new life elsewhere.