Failure by IC to protect minorities in Kosovo could lead to renewed conflict

Kosovo's FInal Status: new Report:

http://www.minorityrights.org/ 

 

Press release

 

Failure by international community to protect minorities in Kosovo could lead to renewed conflict  

 

Embargoed for release Monday 7th August 2006 at 10:30 a.m.  

 

7 August 2006 

 

After seven years of UN and international governance the situation in Kosovo is 'little short of disastrous' and there is a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring again, according to a new report by Minority Rights Group.

The report titled Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule launched today, criticizes the UN and international community for failing to protect the rights of Kosovo's minority communities. It describes how the situation of minorities in Kosovo remains the worst in Europe, and highlights the danger of these mistakes being repeated in Iraq.

"The authorities have allowed a segregated society to develop and become entrenched, and thousands of minorities remain displaced," the report says.

"Nowhere (in Europe) is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed or attacked, simply for who they are or what language they speak," it adds.

According to the report, the short term measures of separating Kosovo's two main communities, Albanians and Serbs, has disastrous long term implications.

Clive Baldwin the author of the report, says: "The reality is that segregation is entrenched, creating a society that is so fractured that non of its people feel protected. They live in fear of mass conflict re-occurring in the long term."

The report, which looks at the situation of Kosovo's Albanian, Serb and other communities, including, Bosniak, Croat, Turk, Ashkalia and Roma, argues that problems to do with minorities are not due to lack of resources. In fact, the international administration has been one of the most expensive in UN history.

Instead, the report says a mindset of segregation, a lack of clear accountable government and a lack of any real protection of human rights and the rule of law are among the reasons why minorities continue to suffer in Kosovo.

It also faults the international community for failing to learn from past mistakes and use the experience and expertise available to them to protect minority rights.
"It is almost incredible is that all these mistakes have been made under an international administration consisting of institutions, notably the UN and OSCE, with a long institutional memory of addressing minority rights," Baldwin says.

According to the report the 'future status negotiations' represents both the best hope and the greatest danger and as the future of Kosovo is currently being decided the report calls for a radical move away from the patterns of segregation. It also recommends that minority rights are guaranteed by the rule of law and that all minorities, including minority women, should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country.

"The message is clear to all parties. The Serbs need to realize that the effective protection of all communities in Kosovo in an integrated society is the only long term solution. It is in their best interest," says Baldwin.

"We urge the international community to recognise the damage that segregation can cause. They must realize that the Serbs and Kosovo's other communities, including the Albanians, are not benefiting from the current system. The only long term security for Kosovo will be effective protection for all minorities," he says.

For more information or to arrange interviews with Clive Baldwin, please contact Farah Mihlar on 0207 4224205 (office) 078 70596863 (mobile) or farah.mihlar@mrgmail.org

Notes to Editors

• Since 1999 Kosovo has had an interim administration, consisting the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which includes representatives of the EU and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and a NATO-led Kosovo Force.
• Clive Baldwin is Head of Advocacy at Minority Rights Group International. From 2000 to 2002 he was a member of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. Previously, he was a practising human rights lawyer.
• Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is a non governmental organisation working to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide.

 

Kosovo report summary

By Preti Taneja

Nowhere in Europe is there such segregation as Kosovo. Thousands of people are still displaced and in camps. Nowhere else are there so many 'ethnically pure' towns and villages scattered across such a small province. Nowhere is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed simply for who they are. And perhaps nowhere else in Europe is at such a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring in the near future - or even a risk of genocide.

This is not a description of Kosovo in 1998 or in 2003. It is a description of Kosovo today. For the Serbs and 'other minorities' - the Roma, Bosniaks (Slavic Muslims), Croats, Turks and Albanians of Kosovo - who suffer from expulsion from their homes, discrimination and restrictions on speaking their own language, the pattern of violence they have endured for so long may be about to be entrenched as law in the new Kosovo, as the future status talks continue behind closed doors in Vienna.

How, after one of the longest and most expensive international administrations since the creation of the United Nations (UN), whose mandate was explicitly to secure an environment for refugees to return home and ensure public safety (Resolution 1244, Article 10), has this been allowed to occur?

This report tracks a clear failure on the part of the international protectorate to learn lessons from the past and draw on the minority rights expertise available to it in the UN and other bodies. This failure has allowed decision-makers to remain unaccountable, and produced a Constitutional Framework that refers to minority rights so broadly that they are too wide to be effective. Instead of integration, the current situation encourages the opposite: segregation. The report shows how the initial international governance structure - five different armed brigades in Kosovo, each running a different region and led by a different country (France, Germany, Italy the UK and the USA), each with very different policies towards security and minorities - has kept fresh the wounds inflicted before the security forces first arrived and allowed patterns of violence to be repeated.

The problem is not lack of financing. Conversely, the fact that so much money has been spent on the region has allowed segregation in public services to become an easy solution to conflict between groups. A short-term mentality, the use of quota systems in public services and an electoral system based on rigid ethnic representation show a lack of commitment to implementing minority rights in any meaningful way.

This report shows how the future status negotiations currently under way in Vienna represent both the best hope and the greatest danger for peace.

For hope to be justified, the report emphasizes, there is a radical need for change in mindset and in practice:

• Minority rights should be guaranteed by a rule of law that is actually taken seriously and applied.

Till today, the governing administration, the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) have declared themselves above regulation, overturning even the most basic of human rights laws, that of requiring all detention to be by order of a judge. Rights that exist on paper are made meaningless, and any fragile sense of security minorities have is consistently undermined. Therefore:

• The criminal justice system must hold those responsible for past crimes to account and see them arrested whatever their political power.

Out of hundreds of investigations into the 2004 atrocities, few have been prosecuted, and those few convicted have received lenient sentences.

• All minorities should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country, instead of talks taking place among a select group of people, in secret and behind closed doors.
• Specific efforts must be made to include women's views and international negotiations should include minority rights and gender experts.

When the Constitutional Framework was drawn up in 2001 it was not put up for general consultation. The same mistake is being made today, with talks taking place in Vienna, far from where the most disadvantaged can take part. Understanding the devastating realities facing returning refugees and communities wanting to keep their language alive, to travel in safety and to seek work at all levels of society - all of which have become next to impossible for Kosovo's minorities despite seven years of international intervention - is vital for anyone involved in peacekeeping missions, in reportage or in international governance.

The report shows that measures that separate communities through religion or ethnicity should be transitional, if they have to be used at all. The future status talks offer a chance for change. Otherwise, the danger is that the patterns of segregation that are accepted in Kosovo, and that lead to the terror of ethnic cleansing, will be enshrined in the Constitution, and will be played out again over the next decade.