EDIT/WORKING COPY

UNMIK on AIR

Minority Communities Try to Define their Problems

July 2004

By Andrea Saula

 

 

SLUG: In February of 2004, the Ombudsperson Institution in Kosovo launched a series of meetings with representatives of minority communities in order to help them define their ongoing problems:

 

Hello and welcome. This is UNMIK on Air programme.

 

“As it is well known, unemployment and occupied property are the biggest problems of our community. At the meeting WITH the  Ombudsperson, we talked about what happened after March 17th and 18th. Also I mentioned our problems in the institutions, with media and cultural affairs.”

 

Faik Marolli, representative of the Ashkali Community.

 

Marolli was one of 5 Representatives of the Bosniak, Turkish, Gorani, Roma and Ashkali communities who met with the Ombudsperson officials for the first time early this year.

 

The goal of the meetings is to help those minority communities, whose problems are not in focus, concretely define difficulties they face in Kosovo today.

 

As Leonora Visoka, special assistant to the Ombudsperson explains, the aim is to help minority communities to express their needs but in a way that will prompt change.

 

“The Ombudsperson Institution does these meetings because of the state of minorities in Kosovo. The first meeting was held before March, and the reason we wanted to continue is that the situation of minorities before the 17th and 18th of March was different and now seems to be even worse. That’s the main reason why we wanted to continue. We know that minorities are going through difficulties but the way they express their needs are not really being brought up for a final decision or in a way that will make a change in the future.”

 

According to Visoka, the Ombudsperson decided to conduct a survey with ten precise questions in order to address the minority concerns adding that these questions will be a base for further research. 

 

“The aim of these questions is to see changes because normally what they [minority communities] say is there is a lack of participation in cultural, economic and social life and that’s the problem. So, our question is what do we have to do together? What do minorities need to suggest to the majority so the majority will feel the responsibility to create for them the conditions that they need?  These ten questions are going to be the base for the future meetings and they are going to explore these questions. We prefer these questions to be answered in written form as well.

 

Problems of other communities in Kosovo, besides the majority Albanian and minority Serbian contingents, are not the focus of media attention.

 

But after this weeks meeting in the Ombudsperson’s office, minority community representatives [with the exception of Mr. Marolli from the Ashkali community] were not ready to talk to media.

 

As Ljubinko Todorovic, Deputy Ombudsperson explains, one of the reasons is the perceived unwillingness to address minority problems:

 

“Leaders of minority communities were not ready to talk to media because issues/problems that they [minorities] and the Ombudsperson raise are not being solved and in this way they show some kind of boycott.”

In a way, these communities remain on the margins of society because of a lack of information.

 

Although RTK, Radio Television of Kosovo, has minority programmes, information is still inaccessible for most of these minority communities.

 

Todorovic says that minorities have major complaints on the issue of media accessibility.  

 

“They complain that they don’t receive daily information. When public information is considered they really have reasons to complain because most of them don’t receive information in the places they live - the minority enclaves, in other words. They should have their local media in order to fit and to become aware of problems throughout Kosovo.”

 

UNMIK together with the Provisional Institutions of Self Government, PISG, launched the Standards Implementation plan of which very important parts are dedicated to minority questions and especially to housing and property issues. 

 

Ashkali representative Faik Marolli says that his community is satisfied with the plan, but they expect housing property questions to be solved:

 

“The Standard implementation process is going very well. Standards are partly implemented. I don’t see any problems regarding the plan, but the questions of unemployment and occupied property remain open. There are a lot of occupied houses and even those that are evicted don’t look like houses anymore but like stables. I can say today that in Kosovo Polje there are 27 families that are out of their homes. It’s similar in Rozajevce and Podujevo.”

 

Officials from the Ombudsperson’s office say that after evaluating the minority answers from the questionnaire, they intend to organize another meeting at the end of summer in order to take some concrete steps with Kosovo’s PISG.