Kosovo's FInal Status: new Report:
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.
"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 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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.
