Volunteers in Action

Protecting and Integrating Minorities in Kosovo
By Angela Griep

10 UN Volunteers are currently working as Local Community Officers (LCOs) or Assistant Local Community Officers all over Kosovo. Their difficult task is to protect the interest of minority groups in the municipalities. One of their most important goals is to integrate representatives of the minority communities within the municipal structure by helping both sides to cooperate with each other.

“The job is extremely interesting, because we are really in the front line where we have to deal with a wide range of issues and sometimes difficult situations”, tells Nelly Sabarthes, LCO in Vushtrri municipality. “Not to forget that we have to implement the UNMIK Policy in minority communities where UNMIK’s mandate may not always meet a consensus. This can be quite challenging.”

A ‘normal’ working day doesn’t exist for a Local Community Officer. “Every day is different”, describes Pierre Gros, LCO in Novo Brdo municipality, his duties. “It can happen that you come to the office at 8.30 and there are already 4 people waiting for you, social cases and/or returnees, who need your assistance.”

To be able to provide help for all different kinds of problems, a Local Community Officer is in close contact with the Municipal Representative as well as with other UN agencies, such as UNHCR and different NGOs in the region. Being familiar with policies, programs and projects helps forwarding the right information and to arrange for the right contacts.

Further duties of an LCO include field visits to returnee families to make sure that they get the assistance they are entitled to. Sometimes a returnee finds his or her former apartment occupied by another family. It is the job of the LCO to mediate between the two parties and to assist the returnee to get their property back.

A main part of the LCOs work is the implementation and supervision of the Municipal Community Offices (MCOs). “MCOs are extensions of the municipality to make public and municipal services accessible to minorities who, due to restricted freedom of movement, don’t have physical access to the municipal building itself”, explains Nelly the intention of these offices.

Nelly is very proud of ‘her’ MCO in Vushtrri municipality. “I have seen really substantial progress, which is a very satisfying feeling”, she says. When the MCO in the Serbian village Preluzje was established about two and a half years ago, it was not very well accepted in the community. People blamed the local staff for their cooperation with UNMIK. But since the office offers services people simply need, like the distribution of ID cards, the community slowly accepted it.

“Now it is well established”, smiles Nelly. At the beginning of her assignment as LCO she did a lot of the MCOs work herself, especially when it came to direct contact with the municipality. “It is just still an emotional issue”, she explains. “The Municipality did not spontaneously take up its responsibilities on issues regarding minorities.” Meanwhile their attitude changed and Nelly handed over most of the actual work to the head of the MCO.

An agreement with the mayor and the Municipal President in Vushtrri about opening an office for the MCO’s employees within the municipal building confirms the change. “This is the physical integration of the office”, points Nelly out happily. “The staff from Preluzje will have their own place whenever they have to work in the municipality. And I have to say that the Municipal President was very supportive regarding this issue.”

Novo Brdo Municipality went even one step further: The MCO based in the Serbian village of Prekovce is now integrated into the municipality and the MCO staff is under the Municipal Department of Administration. “The situation here is a bit different”, explains Pierre “since the Serbs won the municipal elections in November 2002 they are the majority, and there is no real need to keep an extra office for minorities here.”

Novo Brdo municipality consists of 9 Serbian and 5 Albanian villages. The number of the population is nearly half Albanian and half Serbian. “We have a Serbian president and two deputy presidents, one Serb and one Albanian in the municipality”, goes Pierre into details. Many key posts are hold by Serbs, so that the power is more or less balanced. The MCO in Prekovce now became a Municipal Sub-Office and facilitates the access of the Serbian community to municipal services in the way that the municipality is distantly and many people don’t have transport.

The situation in Pristina municipality differs again from Novo Brdo and Vushtri. Since the municipality consists of two big communities with the predominantly Albanian part in Pristina and the Serbian part in the village Gracanica, it is quite difficult to convince people of the need to cooperate with each other. “They often don’t see the need to work together”, explains UNV Danica Santic, Assistant LCO in Pristina municipality the difficulties she deals with.

Danica’s work is mostly about getting people together, arranging meetings between the municipal staff in Pristina and Gracanica, all to show the importance of cooperation between the two ‘communities’. There is visible process here as well. “When I started here in February 2003 a Serbian colleague of mine was very afraid to go to Pristina”, remembers the UNV. “Now he regularly goes there on his own, walking from the municipal building to the particular Ministry to talk to his Albanian colleagues. The meetings between the two offices are becoming much easier like that as well.”

The reconciliation and reintegration process is long. “And we at least see substantial progress, because we are looking at it from outside”, Nelly takes into consideration. “People here are part of the process so that they cannot always see the progress made. That must be quite frustrating for them, sometimes.” So maybe the partly handover in many municipalities provides some kind of motivation for everybody involved and encourages them not to lose patience.

For more information please contact:

Angela Griep, UNV Public Information Officer, UNMIK, Email griep@un.org, or