The term Breakup of Yugoslavia refers to a series of conflicts and political upheavals resulting in the dissolution of the Yugoslavia (the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFR Yugoslavia, or simply SFRY). The SFR Yugoslavia was a former country that occupied a strip of land stretching from present-day Central Europe to the Balkans ?a region with a history of ethnic conflict.

The country was a conglomeration of six regional republics and two autonomous provinces that was roughly divided on ethnic lines and split up in the 1990s into several independent countries. These eight federal units were the six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and two autonomous provinces within Serbia: Kosovo and Vojvodina. Ethnically mixed Bosnia and Herzegovina had not existed as a state since 1465, and moreover, it did not have a clear ethnic majority with "44% Muslims, 33% Serbs, 18% Croats and minorities." The geographical distribution of the ethnic groups which composed Yugoslavia was such that each nation had a population living in all six republics.

Yugoslavia was said to have been a country with seven frontiers, six republics, five nationalities, four languages, three religions, two alphabets, and one leader.With Bosnia's demographic structure comprising a population of Serbs and Croats making close to 50%, and with ideas on independence resting with the ethnicities rather than the nation on the whole, control of territory once again became open to interpretation, with large sections of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia under dispute as to its proper ownership. The most important elements which fostered the discord are the formation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the civil war and genocide (see Jasenovac concentration camp) by the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War, the overreaching idea of "Greater Serbia", and the Balkan adaptations of Pan-Slavism. Yugoslavia was once a regional industrial power and economic success.

Twenty years before 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years. But after a decade of Western economic ministrations and five years of disintegration, war, boycott, and embargo, the economy of Yugoslavia collapsed. Yugoslavia was a unique state, straddling both the East and West.

Moreover its president, Josip Broz Tito, was one of the fundamental founders of the "third world" or "group of 77" which acted as an alternative to the superpowers. More importantly, Yugoslavia acted as a buffer state between the West and the Soviet Union and also prevented the USSR from getting a toehold on the Mediterranean Sea. People used to joke that Yugoslavia had seven frontiers, six republics, five nationalities, four languages, three religions, two alphabets and one boss.

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