Kosovo

Kosovo Refugees

Some 10 years after the Kosovo conflict, thousands of Kosovar refugees – most of them from the Roma community – are set to return home, daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported this week.

According to a parliamentary inquiry by the Left party into the matter, Berlin and Pristina plan to sign an agreement this autumn to send back the refugees, the paper said.

There are reportedly 14,000 Kosovar refugees in Germany, 10,000 of whom are Roma.

The agreement states that Kosovo must take all refugees back that can give proof they once lived in the disputed former Serbian territory. The Interior Ministry has apparently promised Kosovo to process 2,500 applications each year and maintain an “appropriate relationship to different ethnicities,” which implies they will not send only the persecuted Roma refugees home, the paper said.

Last year 900 Kosovar refugees returned to their homes from Germany.

In a desolate corner on the outskirts of Pristina, Kosovo, two men sit on the bare ground, mending a bicycle that is a lifeline for their families.

Without their bicycles they could not earn the money they need to keep their large families alive. And what they earn is little enough because their days are spent sifting through the city’s garbage for what others throw away.

“We work in the garbage containers, collecting tin cans, copper, scrap metal, aluminium, whatever we can find,” Besnik Hasanik says with a sad, gap-toothed smile. “Sometimes I can’t find anything because I’m not the only one who’s looking,” he adds.

A marginalized life

Mr. Hasanik is one of at least 30,000 people who identify themselves as belonging to the Roma, Ashkali or Egyptian ethnic groups – Kosovo’s most impoverished communities. They live on the fringes of society, often without the identity papers that would entitle them to the benefits available to other citizens: social welfare, unemployment, even schooling.

On 1st April, 2009, the Acting Ombusperson for Kosovo, Hilmi Jashari published his long-awaited Report No. 304/2008 concerning allegations of abuse of members of Kosovo's second-largest ethnic minority, the Roma and Ashkali occupants of a number displaced persons camps in Kosovo by United Nations agencies who were responsible for placing the camps on highly contaminated land.

His Press Release which accompanied the report speaks of -

"continuous violation by UNMIK of more than one international human rights standards directly applicable in Kosovo, among which the right to life, the right to health, the right to adequate housing, the principle of non-discrimination and several rights enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child".

A small child is sweeping the yard outside her home - anywhere else the scene would be touching - but here in the Cesmin Lug refugee camp in northern Kosovo, it is tragic.

The children are sick with lead poisoning.

The camps were built close to the Trepca lead mine and smelting works.

The factory was closed by order of the UN administration in Kosovo, in 2000. But the slag heaps were never cleaned up.

The lead blackens the children's teeth, blanks out their memory, and stunts their growth.

The children swing between bursts of nervous hyperactivity, and something like a coma. Some have epileptic fits.

Taking its cue from the Ahtisaari plan, Kosovo adopts laws that safeguard Serbs while leaving other ethnic communities out in the cold.

It's been like a mantra for U.S. and European Union politicians and international scholars since Kosovo declared its independence in February: Thanks to the status settlement proposal developed by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari, the new state's constitution and legislation fulfill the highest international standards for protection and promotion of minorities.

The latest iteration of this chorus came from EU foreign ministers at their latest meeting on 8-9 December, when they praised the progress made in Kosovo, “particularly with the adoption of a number of important laws.”