Kosovo: UN hails moves to boost returns of people displaced by conflict

The top United Nations envoy in Kosovo today hailed moves to speed up the return of both refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), an essential step on the path to deciding the final status of the Albanian-majority Serbian province, which the world body has run ever since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid grave rights abuses in ethnic fighting.

“These initiatives bode well for furthering the process of returns, which is a keystone of a multi-ethnic Kosovo that everyone wants,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative Søren Jessen-Petersen said of the Albanian-led Kosovo Government’s updated return policies and procedures.

These aim to increase IDP access to aid, simplify the steps for return and delivery of social services for returnees, strengthen protection mechanisms for minority returnees against discrimination, and incorporate return needs in municipal and central development and budget planning in a province where Albanians outnumber Serbs and others by 9 to 1.

“The new returns policy shows the commitment and seriousness of the Government of Kosovo towards ensuring return of more and more displaced persons and allowing them to make a free and informed choice about the return options available to each individual,” Mr. Jessen-Petersen said.

“I am sure that this will go a long way in convincing members of the minority community that their future is secure in a democratic Kosovo, bound by international conventions on human rights and the protection of minorities,” he added.

Mr. Jessen-Petersen also welcomed the agreement of the Kosovo and Serbian Governments to cooperate more closely in the return of displaced persons to Kosovo.

“The agreement reached in the Protocol will allow greater technical cooperation at municipality levels and this is where the real efforts for sustainable returns must rest,” he said.

The UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has been seeking to foster communal harmony and promote the return of Serbs who fled ever since it took over the administration of the province after the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) military intervention in 1999.

Direct talks between the Kosovo and Serbian sides began in February in Vienna under the auspices of Mr. Annan's Special Envoy for the future status of the province, Martti Ahtisaari. Independence and autonomy are among options mentioned but Serbia rejects independence and Kosovo’s Serbs have been boycotting the province’s provisional institutions. Significant differences so far have emerged on issues of decentralization, just one of many issues on the table.