In step forward, Kosovo Government takes over minority transportation from UN

In a step forward towards fulfilling international goals for Kosovo, which the United Nations has administered since 1999, the world body has turned over responsibility for transportation services for minorities to the local Government.

Patricia Waring of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the province’s Minister of Transport and Communications, Qemajl Ahmeti, today signed an agreement governing the transfer of UNMIK’s competency to provide humanitarian transportation for the minorities in Kosovo to the Ministry.

Ms. Waring voiced confidence that the Kosovo Government “will fulfil all its political, administrative and financial commitments to ensure the freedom of movement to all of Kosovo’s communities.”

She added that the transfer would not change or disrupt existing services.

Since 2001 UNMIK has been operating the “Freedom of Movement Train” from Leposavic to Skopje and a humanitarian bus service for minority communities throughout Kosovo.

For the past four months, representatives from Kosovo, the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have been working to ensure the freedom of movement for all of Kosovo’s communities including their direct participation in any decision to change humanitarian transportation services.

Ms. Waring stressed that in signing the agreement, the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government in Kosovo are fulfilling one of the priorities for implementing the so-called Standards, a set of eight targets that include building democratic institutions, enforcing minority rights, creating a functioning economy and setting up an impartial legal system. The Standards framework is considered key to achieving progress on the issue of the status of the ethnically divided Serbian province.