Comment: Minority Rights Need Protecting

As calls mount for Kosovo’s largely Albanian population to be granted independence, care should be taken not to sideline the protectorate’s non-Serb minorities.

Adequate protection of minority rights and permission for displaced minorities to return to their homes in safety have long been trumpeted as vital requirements. These conditions need to be guaranteed before for talks can begin over the final status of the province.

But the international community appears increasingly willing to compromise on minority issues in the protectorate.

With the possibility that talks on Kosovo’s final status could begin as soon as the second half of this year, there is a real risk that Roma and other non-Serb minorities who lack a political voice could find themselves swept aside.

Victims of a conflict which they have never considered their own, Roma in Kosovo have long found themselves a target of discrimination and violence from both sides.

Perceived as siding with the Serbian nationalist cause – and therefore culpable for crimes committed in its name – they have been persecuted and subjected to ethnic cleansing.

Many Roma were driven from Kosovo following the 1999 NATO bombing campaign and the retreat of the Yugoslav army. Reports produced by the OSCE’s office in Pristina in the years since the conflict contain pages and pages of references to acts of violence perpetrated against Roma and other non-Serb minorities like Ashkali and Egyptians.

During widespread rioting last March, which was directed mainly against Kosovo Serbs by the protectorate’s Albanian majority, many Roma and Ashkali were also chased from their homes and had their property destroyed. At the same time, Roma in Serbia proper fell victim to retaliatory attacks by Serb extremists.

Only some 25,000 Roma remain in Kosovo today, a tiny remnant of a community that was estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and 200,000 people in the past. Those who have stayed in the protectorate find themselves in a precarious position.

The situation in Fabricka Mahala – a quarter in Kosovska Mitrovica that was once home to one of the largest and oldest Roma communities in the region – is a case in point. The area was looted and burned to the ground just a week after the end of the NATO bombing campaign in June 1999, and today most of its former inhabitants remain living outside Kosovo. Others have moved to a refugee camp in Zitkovac, where they inhabit ground poisoned by the remnants of a nearby factory.

The situation is the same all over the region: Kosovo Roma are today the last inhabitants of refugee camps in the former Yugoslavia. Tens of thousands of Roma live in informal settlements, often without access to water, electricity and other basic services, and under permanent threat of eviction. They survive on money scraped together from occasional work, begging, charity donations and selling whatever they can find in rubbish bins.

If these camps have emptied somewhat over the years, this is less likely to be associated with their inhabitants returning home than with the fact that thousands of Roma have somehow made their way into Western Europe.

Voluntary returns to Kosovoare still unusual. Up to the end of 2003, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees registered just 10,000 so-called “minority returns” in Kosovo – that is, people returning to an area where their community or group lives as a minority.

The rioting last March has slowed down the process considerably. Of the 4,100 people who were driven from their homes during the violence, 1,864 remain displaced within Kosovo.

A review of the set of standards laid out by the international community as a condition for negotiations on Kosovo’s final status to begin is due to be carried out this summer.

There is increasing pressure today for the talks to get underway – despite the fact that progress in Kosovo has been limited, particularly in relation to the protection of minority rights.

The International Crisis Group, an influential Brussels-based think-tank, recently urged the international community to lay the foundations for negotiations on the protectorate’s final status as soon as possible. Otherwise, Crisis Group analysts said, the frustrations of the Albanian majority could plunge the whole region into a new wave of violence.

The argument put forward by Albanian politicians has also gained ground that local institutions in Kosovo cannot be expected to protect minorities until they are granted full political powers.

The tendency to shy away from an insistence on minority rights is particularly marked in relation to non-Serb communities like the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians. The latest report presented by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to the UN Security Council on February 14 largely omits to mention these groups, whilst emphasising the problems encountered by Kosovo Serbs.

When considering the possible consequences of this, the events in Bosnia and Hercegovina are alarming, but instructive, precedents.

At the time of the Dayton peace accords in 1995, Roma were not included among Bosnia’s constituent peoples – with the result that today they are excluded from the highest political positions, including the rotating state presidency.

Only in 2003 did Bosnian Roma gain official status as a national minority, and even then implementation of the rights granted to them has been extremely slow. Ten years after the end of the war, many Bosnian Roma are still unable to return to their homes and only two per cent have a regular job.

According to the latest report from the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, Roma in Bosnia also continue to be discriminated against in terms of access to education, housing and even citizenship.

The way the Kosovo Roma are today similarly ignored by the international community is the product of a crude realpolitik. Originally seen as the main prerequisite for opening status negotiations, the issue of safeguarding minority rights has since become subordinated to the interests of the dominant groups.

The Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians are put at a disadvantage by the fact that they do not have either their own state institutions or a unified political voice. Their communities are scattered throughout the region – even throughout Europe – and the situations and interests of their members vary accordingly.

By neglecting to take into these factors into account, the international community risks increasing the minorities’ sense of alienation. There is a danger that a situation in Kosovo will emerge in which Roma and other non-Serb minorities may no longer have a place.

Karin Waringo is an independent journalist and researcher specialising in EU external relations and minority issues. She is also a former adviser to the European Roma Information Office.

A previous version of this article was published in the Global Politician.