For most of Bosnia's minority refugees and internally displaced the fruits of peace are still yet to be savoured. Increasingly, however, many of them are taking the plunge with "spontaneous returns" to their homes.
For the international organisations such returns are fraught with difficulties. Are the returnees the pawns of political extremist provocateurs ahead of elections? Can they be allowed to "queue-jump" in their demands for scarce resources? Yet if the return is viable should it not be encouraged and assisted? That, after all, is the spirit of the Dayton peace agreement.
Under threat of eviction within 90 days from Croat homes in Travnik, 100 men from the Muslim villages of Siprage a month ago decided that the time had come to go home. Now they are living in a leaking container and a scatter of tents with neither water or power - already a turn in the weather shows the abject misery they will face as winter closes in.
In this Serb-majority area south of Banja Luka there were 22 Muslim villages with a total of 4,760 inhabitants - 16 of the villages and six schools were totally destroyed.
Pafic Osman, the spokesman of the returnees, says they have yet had no problems with the local Serb authorities, although some tension with local people is still evident. Twenty local Serb families have moved into some of the few Muslim homes still standing and are refusing to leave.
Under the terms of Dayton, the returnees must now use the powers that are being used to evict them from Travnik against these families.
This is delicate ground for organisations like the EU humanitarian office, ECHO. Assistance to this desperate community will only be possible with the co-operation of the Serb authorities, and that will only be forthcoming if ECHO is even handed.
Successful talks with local officials emphasise the work the EU is doing to force Croatia to take back the tens of thousands of Croatian Serbs now living in Banja Luka.
The decision to help to rebuild three villages also poses other problems. Richard Lewatowski, the head of ECHO in Bosnia, is committing the last £300,000 in his 1998 £32 million returns budget - now the member-states will be asked to come up with more from reserves at a time when many fear demands from a mass exodus from Kosovo.
ECHO's emergency work with returnees is complemented and increasingly being taken over by the longer-term developmental funding from the EU's directorate responsible for relations with former eastern Europe which will spend over £160 million this year in assisting returnees. Funding is also coming through such international bodies as the UNHCR, USAID and non-governmental organisations.
The International Crisis Group, which is chaired by Senator George Mitchell and specialises in crisis management policy, is extremely critical of the so-called "Open Cities" scheme which allows cities accept minority returnees for cash aid. The ICG points out that in many cases, despite massive injections of cash, returns are simply not materialising.