UNMIK/PR/961
Thursday, 8 May 2003

SRSG Michael Steiner delivered the following address to the OSCE Permanent Council this morning:

Intervention to the OSCE Permanent Council
by SRSG Michael Steiner
8 May 2003

Mr. Chairman,

Since my last report to you, the UN Mission in Kosovo has entered what is perhaps its most critical and delicate phase.

We are continuing with the process of transferring competencies to Kosovo’s provisional institutions that began with the formation of municipal assemblies, the provisional parliament and government. Responsibilities have to be transferred gradually, so that the society’s institutions have the capacity to bear them.

This makes local capacity building and monitoring more important than ever. As we transfer more responsibilities, we have to intensify our monitoring of how they’re carried out. With its seasoned field presence, the OSCE is uniquely qualified to play the leading role in this critical process.

Our priorities have not changed.

We need to continue to battle organized crime, which still poisons the Balkans and threatens the security of Europe. We need to consolidate the rule of law. This means ensuring that all institutions respect human rights. It also means dismantling parallel structures whose very existence undermines the rule of law.

We need to continue building the foundation for a functioning market-based economy, the only prospect for sustainable development.

We need to accelerate the returns process by ensuring that all displaced persons can make a genuine and informed choice whether to return. To be sustainable, we must ensure that returnees have full and fair access to all public services. They must have freedom of movement, the ability to repossess their property and the ability to work without discrimination. At the same time, members of minority communities must recognize the new realities and work through legal institutions.

Integration within Kosovo is the key to Kosovo’s integration within Europe. Transforming Kosovo into a place where all its people can live in security and dignity is not only essential for the sake of minority communities. It is essential for the long-term stability of the Balkans and Europe itself. To achieve this transformation, we need to help Kosovans to make European standards their own.

I Re-conceptualizing

I could sit here and talk again about the need to consolidate what we have accomplished in all these areas with our enormous investments so far. About the overriding need to finish the job.

As the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Netherlands Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who visited Kosovo a couple of weeks ago, said: “I think everybody agrees that much remains to be done in Kosovo. Both in the economic and the political area, the international community needs to reconfirm its commitment to Kosovo.”

Such exhortations are as valid today as they have ever been. But to navigate the treacherous waters we have now entered in Kosovo we need to do more than simply renew our determination: we need to re-conceptualize our challenge. Rather than just create standard institutions, we must institutionalize standards.

Let’s review where Kosovo fits in Europe, where UNMIK fits in Kosovo and where the OSCE fits in UNMIK.

Do you know where Kosovo will be in five to seven years? After the accession of Romania and Bulgaria, the western Balkans will be surrounded by the EU – but not IN it. For those concerned with European security, the problem of Kosovo is the disparity between geography and content. Physically, Kosovo lies within Europe - but politically and economically, the underdeveloped quality of its institutions and public life put it in a different league.

The attack on a railway bridge in northern Kosovo on April 12 backfired on the terrorists. It could have resulted in a catastrophic loss of innocent human life and a devastating setback for peace in the Balkans. Such incidents serve to remind all of us that despite rising challenges in the Middle East, the Caucasus and elsewhere, Kosovo remains an urgent security priority for Europe.

Organized crime is a regional problem that requires regional solutions. As we all know, criminals respect no borders. Organized crime in Kosovo and other parts of the Balkans has already spread its tentacles far across Europe. When you weigh the importance of Kosovo next to competing priorities farther afield, I urge you to remember the choice Europe faces directly.

To put it starkly: Europe can either help us fill our prisons in Kosovo by supporting vital work in training police, developing the judiciary and developing technical forensic expertise. Or Kosovo will help fill prisons in Europe. Clearly, this would be a bad bargain. Instead, after the huge investment made already, we must continue our work to make Kosovo a beacon for the rule of law and, ultimately, an exporter of stability.

Now, the OSCE’s role in Kosovo. Ambassador Pascal Fieschi has provided a sure hand in guiding OMIK through increasingly turbulent waters. I know that Pascal is sorry he isn’t able to be today. But even in his absence, I want to thank him for his efforts.

The pillar structure of the UN Mission in Kosovo has been a success. Within UNMIK, we have recently discussed whether the structure needed to be updated. All agreed that the pillar structure didn't need revamping. It has already evolved naturally.

II From Hardware to Software

Within this structure, the OSCE plays critical roles. In the first phase of UNMIK’s mission, we focused most of our efforts on building the hardware for a functioning democratic society: police, schools, provisional institutions. The OSCE made an invaluable contribution by undertaking the challenge of organizing the first three democratic elections in Kosovo’s history.

Now UNMIK has shifted virtually all its resources into creating the software Kosovo needs to run smoothly and to interface with its European neighbors. The OSCE has considerable field experience in training, monitoring and other forms of capacity-building. Having played a central role in creating standard institutions, the OSCE now has an equally critical role in institutionalizing standards.

What does it mean to “institutionalize standards”?

Over the past four years, we have built the forms of democratic self-government. Now we must fill these forms with the actual content of democratic life.

Though democratic systems vary widely in specifics, at the heart of all of them is a system of checks and balances. The formal separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers is only the first step in creating this system. For checks and balances to operate effectively, everyone must participate. Kosovo Serbs as well. Boycotting means removing the checks and upsetting the balance. “Boycott” must be struck from Kosovo’s political lexicon. Instead of doing less, everyone has to do more – and that means participation.

For checks and balances to work, Kosovo’s political culture also needs to develop a capacity for recognizing and addressing its own weaknesses. Such a capacity is the indispensable feedback mechanism that allows institutions to learn from their mistakes. Today in Kosovo this capacity remains seriously underdeveloped. In rectifying this, the OSCE is playing the leading role.

Today, Kosovo’s Assembly has before it four draft laws that I have asked it to rewrite in conformity with Resolution 1244 and the Constitutional Framework. Today is an important test of the Assembly’s ability and will to work constructively within the law.

The OSCE’s Department of Human Rights also conducts comprehensive and wide-ranging monitoring to ensure that all international and Kosovo’s provisional institutions comply with international standards. To be sustainable, the OSCE must train Kosovans to take up this critical assessment work on the local level.

The OSCE has been instrumental in drafting legislation that is critical for embedding standards into Kosovo’s institutions. The Draft Omnibus Anti-discrimination Law, is an essential bulwark defending people’s right to live in security and dignity. On returns, the OSCE helps to foster the necessary atmosphere in local communities through community dialogue and reconciliation initiatives.

The OSCE continues to play the lead role in training the judiciary, police, new Municipal Assembly members, journalists and civil society leaders. A mature, informed, inquiring, independent, and responsible media is essential to make all the other basic elements of society work.

III Institutionalizing Standards

Having organized the elections, the OSCE is now transferring the skills necessary to organize future elections to their Kosovan partners. Discussion of Kosovo’s future electoral system is focused in the Elections Working Group chaired by Ambassador Fieschi. This group includes representatives of all the political parties in the Kosovo Assembly as well as representatives of civil society.

As you are no doubt aware, there is a move afoot in the Assembly to usurp authority over the creation of Kosovo’s electoral system that 1244 expressly gave to the International Community – for very good reasons. We must all make clear to the Kosovo Institutions that they cannot overstep the bounds set in 1244. They must act in accordance with the law.

The OSCE drafted the proposed legislation for an Independent Media Commission (IMC), the foundation of Kosovo’s media sector. The Kosovo Assembly is now reviewing the regulation within their transferred competencies. We are looking for the Assembly to pass the IMC law quickly in order to see establishment of a local body ensuring a code of conduct for journalists. The eventual IMC law must ensure a media broadcast environment compatible with European standards. With generous support from the OSCE and other donors and experts, Kosovo now has a successful public broadcaster in RTK. We must protect this achievement with respect for the rich European tradition of public broadcasting.

Every time an SRSG addresses you, he mentions the Police School. As you know, the Police School has given basic training to over 5,000 officers. But this is just the beginning. We must resist the temptation to say that with this basic training our job is done. Once again, this is about institutionalizing standards. The Police School is now providing the specialized training that is imperative for defeating the organized crime that directly menaces Europe. Having invested 27 million Euro in building the school, we now have a valuable resource for training not only police officers, but people working in all areas of public safety. Needless to say, it’s training for public safety as a whole – not just police – that belongs to the OSCE’s mandate as an architect of European security. This Kosovo success story is now being taken to Iraq by the head of the school, who’s been invited to help set up police training there.

The OSCE is also playing a crucial role in fighting one of the most odious types of crime, the trafficking in human beings. After developing legislation making trafficking in human beings a crime, the OSCE now runs shelters along with the IOM, helps organize repatriation of victims and organizes public awareness campaigns about the issue.

All of these individual programs fit into a cohesive picture. UNMIK needs to finish the job it began in 1999. In this, the OSCE and the EU are part of a common UN engagement. We’ve come far. Finishing the job means institutionalizing the standards. In Europe, no standard is more precious than tolerance and respect for diversity. Making this a reality in Kosovo means filling democratic forms with democratic substance.

For us all, such a focus dovetails both with our mandate and the reality of shrinking budgets. It also represents the intelligent way to finish the job. We must all remember that history’s judgment – and Europe’s security – depend on what we will leave behind once we have gone.