MRG: Kosovo's independence leaves vacuum in international protection for minorities
Post-independence Kosovo lacks effective international protection for minorities, which is worsening the situation for smaller minorities and forcing some to leave the country for good, an international human rights organisation warns in a new report.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Thursday, May 28, 2009
Minority Rights Group International says in a report released on 27 May that Serbs and many smaller minorities, such as Ashkali, Bosniaks, Croats, Egyptians, Gorani, Roma and Turks, are beginning to leave Kosovo, because they face exclusion and many instances of discrimination.
"Restriction of movement and political, social and economic exclusion are particularly experienced by smaller minorities," says Mark Lattimer, MRG's Executive Director.
"These minorities also suffer from lack of access to information or to tertiary education in their own languages. This, combined with tough economic conditions, have resulted in many of these groups starting to leave Kosovo altogether," he adds.
In this latest report, MRG says the lack of certainty over the status of the territory has limited the practical application of international human rights law.
"There is a danger that the new international organisations operating in Kosovo will compound the failure of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo to ensure a tolerant, multi-ethnic society," says Lattimer.
MRG warns that unless this trend is reversed, it will see the steady migration of minority groups who have lived in Kosovo for hundreds of years, such as Bosniaks and Turks, and who have other states to migrate to.
A decade after the conflict people from minority communities still languish in displaced camps in dire conditions near Kosovska Mitrovica. For Ashkali, Egyptian and Roma, who have no other countries to escape to, these trends are likely to lead to engrained poverty and further marginalization for generations to come, the report says.